Sweeping Zen » Taiun Michael Ellistonhttp://sweepingzen.com
The Who's Who of Zen BuddhismThu, 19 Feb 2015 15:23:18 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Moving forward, looking backhttp://sweepingzen.com/moving-forward-looking-back/
http://sweepingzen.com/moving-forward-looking-back/#commentsMon, 17 Feb 2014 13:25:25 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=97671Last month’s Dharma Byte addressed finding the balance in daily life that comes from Zen and its meditation; and the fact that practicing Zen itself requires striking a balance between time devoted to zazen and time demanded of our responsibilities to family, household and career. This dimension of Zen practice may be thought of as ...

]]>Last month’s Dharma Byte addressed finding the balance in daily life that comes from Zen and its meditation; and the fact that practicing Zen itself requires striking a balance between time devoted to zazen and time demanded of our responsibilities to family, household and career. This dimension of Zen practice may be thought of as developing “social Samadhi” along with the more personal dimensions of Samadhi – physical, mental and emotional levels – that grow stronger over time on the cushion.

Other social examples of balance or imbalance may be witnessed in what passes for justice and reconciliation between individuals, groups, and even whole nations. The Nuremburg trials as well as those of the Japanese military after WWII are examples that stand out in memory for my generation; more starkly for our parents’ generation, who fought that war; and fading quickly into obscurity for our children’s generation. George Santayana’s warning that “Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it” never seemed clearer to me, though I never felt that I could learn much from studying history, personally.

One reason is summed up in another famous quote from Winston Churchill, “History is written by the victors.” History is suspect for a number of reasons. The history of Zen, for example, is incomplete, as is any history. Matsuoka Roshi considered history to be one of the great deceivers in that it creates a distorted impression, for example that only one Zen master, such as Master Dogen, was preeminent during a given period. Nothing could be further from the truth. But it is exceedingly difficult to grasp the bigger picture of interdependent interplay of contingent events, causes and conditions of the times.

The trial of German Nazis for war crimes garnered the greatest amount of attention after the war, and has enjoyed the most retention in public memory as determined by media coverage, especially that of Adolf Eichmann. Trials of the Japanese are not as iconic, though seared into the memory of those Allied forces held as prisoners of war. Something like 5,000 combatants were identified as “war criminals” and sentenced to be punished, ranging from death by hanging to lifetime incarceration. Hundreds of POWs volunteered as hangmen. The lone judge to vote against criminalizing Japan’s wartime behavior was from India. He maintained that the Japanese were pushed into war by actions of the USA.

We saw a willful revisionist history after the Vietnam War, with resultant pain and social distortions still with us today, in the form of PTSD and other disorders. We are witness to perhaps the most grotesque manifestation of war in the unfair competition for needed services between vets of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The old saw has it that time heals all wounds. But not if they are not cleansed. They simply fester, and become worse. And it seems that we simply do not know how to clean some kinds of wounds.

Before turning to the personal side of this tragic dimension of life, it is worth noting that the public pronouncements surrounding these events often repeat the same refrain. The issue is presented as a choice between “moving forward” or “looking back.” The former is touted as the positive, progressive and forward-looking option, while the latter is deemed negative and retrogressive. The forward approach is the choice of those who want to “move on,” get on with the business of the future, not get bogged down by “water under the bridge.” Those who want to revisit the past insist that it is not possible to have a fresh start without redressing grievances. It is instructive to note that the former position is predictably taken by the victors, and relative aggressors, to the recent unpleasantness; while the latter position is just as predictably held by the relative victims, the oppressed. Over time, the two sides often switch positions, so that after centuries of internecine conflict, the attempt to determine original sin becomes an endless regress into the dark mists of forgotten history. Forget, Hell! captures this sentiment in the case of the US Civil War. The truth is, we can only move forward by looking back, simultaneously.

A recent special on television recounted the provenance of the Parthenon, the iconic example of Greek architecture gracing the Acropolis of Athens for lo these many millennia. The story goes that the rulers of Athens offered up their daughter as a human sacrifice to quell a conflict that threatened the cohesion of the community. It struck me first, as an example of the lost sense of noblesse oblige, the idea that those who most benefit from society should step up to make the most sacrifice in times of crisis. Why the daughter is offered up, rather than the self-sacrifice of one of the principals, is open to debate, of course, along with the sacrifice of Isaac. The details of the story and its accuracy are not important here, but the point made by a commentator, that we do not have human sacrifice today, hit me with a force currently characterized by the colorful expression, gobsmacked.

If we are to learn anything from history, it should be the answer to that line from the song made famous by the late Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: “When will we ever learn?” What is the volunteer army if not human sacrifice? The youth of the nation—more accurately the youth of the lower income/opportunity segment of the population—are routinely sacrificed to the professed “vital interests” of the nation in recurrent forays in international adventurism. It becomes obvious that these so-called vital interests reflect those of international corporate entities more than they do any legitimate interests of the body politic of the USA. At least the Greek imperative was altruistic, if we can believe the story.

There have been few examples in the public domain of a balanced approach to a just resolution of such injustices. One shining example is that of Mohandas Gandhi’s nonviolent breaking of the yoke of British imperialism in India. More recently, the truth and reconciliation commission formed by the leadership of the recently departed Nelson Mandela of South Africa. The final outcome of rebalancing the extremes of apartheid are perhaps yet to be seen, but at least this represents a step away from the usual truth and retribution approach.

On a more immediate basis, recent political attacks on the president and a potential future candidate of the other party persuasion, tarred with Bridgegate, have become so much the same-ol’-same-ol’ as to have lost their effectiveness, if none of their vitriol, in swaying the undecided. The recent winter storm in Atlanta, labeled Snowmageddon, is an even more trivial example. The finger-pointing began immediately, as if in this best-of-all-possible worlds, it is unacceptable that people will do what they always do, which is to engage in self-serving behavior that accumulates the causes and conditions of disaster as quickly and predictably as expressways accumulate snow and ice.

In these situations, everyone wants to point a finger at anything other than their own nose. As usual, those who are least responsible receive the most heat. And those elected and appointed to anticipate and take action are now most interested in making sure this does not happen in the future, rather than debating their failures in the most recent past. A brief review of history shows the same pattern of incompetence, denial or ‘fessing up, putting the past behind and moving on, occurring on a regular basis—every decade or so in the case of local weather issues, about the same for international wars these days.

But the final lessons to be learned must necessarily take root in the heart of our being, on the personal level. Social activism comes second, third, or perhaps even fourth. Buddhism, and Zen in particular, does not profess to offer a top-down solution for society, but a ground-up approach to personal salvation and sanity in the midst of life. Of course, we want to observe the insidious effects of these societal influences on our own worldview and resultant behaviors, but dispassionately, in order to find liberation.

We are all guilty of selective memory, not just our leaders. Indeed, it may be one of the saving graces of human dignity, allowing us to mask the crushing inadequacy of our failure to live up to our own highest ideals. Think of the last time you had a part in a dispute with your fellows at work, family at home, or—Buddha forfend—at the Zen center. Are you the one wanting to move on, or do you prefer to go back and review what happened in the interest of avoiding such another pitfall in the future? If you want to move on, not cry over spilt milk, is it because you are the one who spilled the milk? If you prefer to pick over those bones again, is it in the interests of justice, or just that you like to carry a grudge?

The social dimensions of Zen practice take a back seat to the personal. If we are not straight with ourselves, we will be of no use to others. In considering our behavior toward others, and theirs toward us, we need look no further than the Precepts and Perfections for wise guidance, as well as the Noble Eightfold Path. But the true value of this kind of second-guessing and problem-solving is what it reveals about the nature of the self. If we can come to an accommodation with the limitations of the constructed self—to even be capable of solving this dilemma—we may find an opening, a Dharma Gate, into the true self. If we live within the reality of this Buddha Nature, we will find that we do not hold anything against others, nor against ourselves. At least not for long, and the emphasis on the former. We are always our own worse critics, as is understandable. We know ourselves too well, even if we have everyone else fooled. But we should not be so hard on ourselves that we begin to doubt our potential for awakening. This does not amount to a license to kill, steal or lie, or any of the rest. It is a license to accept and admit to imperfection. As the great Chinese sage says (Hsinhsinming: Faith Mind; by Sengcan):

To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about nonperfection. To live in this faith is the road to nonduality, for the nondual is one with the trusting mind.

This trusting mind is not a simple matter of deciding to be more trusting in relationships. It is a deeper trust in existence itself, and the wisdom of bodhicitta, the body-mind, buddha nature, or true self. This self does not need to be, nor to be perceived as, perfect. We reserve the right to be wrong, in Zen. But we do not claim the right to not learn from our mistakes. Including what has been written here. It, the Zen life, is all one long mis-take. Master Sengcan concludes with this exclamation expressing exasperation with the effort to express buddhadharma:

Words! The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

We should not waste today in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this. Today is the only time we really have. “Today” is also only in this present moment.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/moving-forward-looking-back/feed/0Right Balancehttp://sweepingzen.com/right-balance-taiun-michael-ellistion/
http://sweepingzen.com/right-balance-taiun-michael-ellistion/#commentsWed, 29 Jan 2014 19:01:47 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=95697For Americans interested in pursuing a Zen practice, finding the right balance between the demands of household, work and family; and the necessary intensity of zazen practice may seem to be the most pressing and stressing dilemma in actualizing a Zen life. We imagine that in simpler times, people had more time to spare, and ...

]]>For Americans interested in pursuing a Zen practice, finding the right balance between the demands of household, work and family; and the necessary intensity of zazen practice may seem to be the most pressing and stressing dilemma in actualizing a Zen life.

We imagine that in simpler times, people had more time to spare, and could devote a greater share of their time to meditation and study. With all the touted time-saving devices of technology, we still seem to have little or no time to ourselves. The current droll expression, the hurrier I go, the behinder I get captures this syndrome. An ancient version of the same idea, from the Chinese Zen poem Hsinshinming: Faith Mind says it a bit differently, specifically relevant to Zen practice:

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult

But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute

The faster they hurry the slower they go

This is both a criticism of those who approach Zen practice with limited views as well as those who do not practice at all, and an admonition to practitioners to be fearless and resolute in pursuit of buddhadharma. This general mindset underlies Right Effort, and gives a clue to how we may achieve balance in our practice.

Usually when someone brings this issue up, it is an indication that they suspect that they are not practicing with sufficient intensity. They worry that it is not possible to find the time for zazen, both at home and away, without compromising obligations to family and career. For every project or task in which we invest the present moment, there are a dozen others that go wanting for our attention.

The source of this dilemma is the tendency of the discriminating mind to compartmentalize, dividing life into separate categories. The next step in the process is to set the various pieces in opposition to each other. Then we conceive of them as taking time to plan, engage, and complete. Thus we are forever caught in the bind of measured time, another compartmentalized conception. Taking this for reality, we see no way out.

Time and motion efficiency experts and life coaches apply various techniques to this problem, such as making it visible. One such approach recommends drawing up a pie chart, in which we give a portion of the whole to each of our regular activities, whether based on a 24-hour, weekly, monthly or annual cycle. Then we examine the activities to see if they are out of balance in some obvious way, looking to reduce one to make room for another, to arrive at a more desirable allocation of time to our goals and objectives. In other words, we use measurement of time to re-plan our measure of dedication to tasks.

If we closely examine this process, and pay attention to singular subject which appear in conlict, it becomes apparent that the boundaries are not so clear. What we sort into categories are aspects of life that are more related than opposed. This is not a simplistic assertion that all is one, just an admission of the not-two nature of life.

If, for example, we imagine that time spent in zazen is time neglecting our family, we might remember that when we do not sit in zazen for some period, our relationship to our family begins to deteriorate. We may secretly, subliminally even, resent the fact that we have to give up something for the sake of spouse, children or parents—or worst case, in-laws—with their lack of appreciation of that sacrifice salting the wound.

We cannot balance our relationships to others when they are built on such underlying self-centered impulses to begin with. Our complaint that we do not have time to do zazen is a symptom that we do not understand either time or zazen. When we do zazen, we are using our time to its utmost efficiency and efficacy. When we leave the cushion, this mindset goes with us. We find that we waste less time in futile pursuits, or in resentment and acrimony between ourselves and those making demands on our time.

This is especially true at work. A majority of people report that they are happy with their work, those who have work in this time of economic contraction in the labor sector. Whether this happiness is genuine—or feigning of contentment in fear of losing a job, or confronting genuine underlying unhappiness—is anyone’s guess. It was probably not included in the questionnaire. But most of our discomfort at work is from relationships.

Compensation in terms of salary and benefits is always related to at least one other person, usually the identified “boss” or management in general, especially where unions are involved. It is difficult to apply the principles of compassionate engagement when the deck is stacked against us, with the other person holding all the trump cards. Often, we have no idea what they themselves make for being our boss, but they know everything— more than we would like—about us.

Our subordinates present another set of interpersonal issues, where we are on the hot seat in terms of supervising their performance and dealing with personalities that can be difficult. We are uncomfortably aware of the interconnectedness of our role in the enterprise with those in close proximity. We also have to be mindful of the viewpoint of others in the chain of command, to whom our boss reports. And over time, these roles and relationships are as impermanent as any other elements in the Buddhist universe. As the old adage has it, be nice to the people you meet on the way up the ladder; they are the same people you will meet on the way down.

Then there are client and supplier relationships outside the company; or students in the classroom; patients at the hospital. Patterns of relationships repeat, though the nature of the product or service varies. Sometimes disputes come out of left field, and we are blindsided with a conflict that begins to take up all of our time, including agonizing over it after work. At the end of the day—so ubiquitous a phrase that it is distasteful to repeat it—we begin to see home as a refuge from work. In some cases, work becomes a refuge from home. And the annual vacation becomes a refuge from both. Thus the annual calendar is sucked into the relentless maw of time consumption.

What if this is all just fantasy, simply the workings of our imagination? The monkey mind is endlessly capable of playing such games. What about a real vacation, a time-out from this merry-go-round?

Zazen has been referred to as a mini-vacation, a brief respite from the rat race. One of the great secrets of Zen is it really takes no time at all. In fact, Zen holds that we do not live in real time unless we enter into it through zazen.

When we think of the entire scope of a project, such as writing the great American novel, we shrink back in intimidation. The mountain seems insurmountable. But the mountain is climbed one step at a time, though we might prefer a helicopter. If we see a mountain as a series of molehills, it is not so daunting. The only question is, Which molehill is in front of us at the moment?

If we think about all the other things that we do in a day that take a half-hour or so, are there none that we could easily forego, for the sake of sitting for a half-hour? If not, how about fifteen minutes? Ten? Five? As Matsuoka-roshi would often say, Sit five minutes: five-minute Buddha? Sit half-an-hour, Buddha for 30! But wouldn’t you rather be Buddha all day?

By this he did not mean sit zazen all day. The effects of zazen are both immediate and cumulative. They go with us, off the cushion. Our resistance to zazen is the molehill become mountain. I once worked with a Canadian company named DYLEX. It is an acronym, meaning Damn your lousy excuses! This is a compassionate message for us.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/right-balance-taiun-michael-ellistion/feed/0Still Point by Taiun Michael Ellistonhttp://sweepingzen.com/still-point-by-taiun-michael-elliston/
http://sweepingzen.com/still-point-by-taiun-michael-elliston/#commentsSun, 29 Apr 2012 20:10:29 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=52536Sōtō Zen was traditionally called the practice of “silent illumination.” This tasted like a pejorative in the mouths of Rinzai proponents, and perhaps followers of other sects, which must have seen themselves as competitive with Soto advocates. Soto folks would return the favor by criticizing Rinzai as kanna, or word Zen. Meaning it was caught up, or ...

]]>Sōtō Zen was traditionally called the practice of “silent illumination.” This tasted like a pejorative in the mouths of Rinzai proponents, and perhaps followers of other sects, which must have seen themselves as competitive with Soto advocates. Soto folks would return the favor by criticizing Rinzai as kanna, or word Zen. Meaning it was caught up, or bogged down, in mind games. Seeking to force enlightenment by sheer effort of will.

During a series of interfaith meditation sessions we hosted in Atlanta over the last few years, the main progenitor and visionary of the project, a retired seminarian from the Columbia Theological Seminary, spoke of meditation as “entering into silence,” and asked us to help himself and his followers to understand how it is done. The various representatives from Christianity, Judaism, Islam and others who attended, would sit in silent meditation for a half hour or so, with minimal instruction from us as to posture, breath, and attention. Then one designee would tell her or his story of faith. Interesting.

ELUSIVE / DELUSIVE SILENCE

But this idea of silence in Zen is a misconception, or may be misconstrued as a goal, or presumed requirement, of meditation. As one of our senior guys said recently, even in an anechoic chamber it is not completely silent. You still hear your heartbeat, breath, static on the neuronal network, and any number of other gurgles, grunts and squeaks that are usually below the radar. In zazen, in more normal but relatively quiet situations, such as the typical zendo, the same is true. Wearing earplugs, especially the wax ones made for swimming, reveals a new world of internal sound, when anyone would anticipate silence.

I have related a true story of how, at one evening session of a long and intensive sesshin, leaning slightly to one side, I suddenly heard the whirring sound of muscle motors! Leaning the other way, same thing! Forward, the same; backward, same. Just like little servo-motors cranking up and then shutting down as I swung back to the center. And this all within a pendulum of maybe an inch or two of arc, at the crown of the head.

If you lean your head close to the large gong (J. kane) at the Zen center, you can hear it emitting a soft tone, at any time. It is never completely silent, or still, even for a moment. Voice of the Buddha, intoning the Sermon of No Words.

Sound abounds. Not to mention the song of the spheres, of course. Or a whole host of other trans-audial tones and harmonics reverberating through space at all times.

Thus, as we have discussed elsewhere, the silence in Zen is not the absence of sound. The sound is in the silence, the silence in the sound. This is one meaning of mokurai, our namesake for the Silent Thunder Order. Master Dogen’s phrase brings it out in stark relief in Shobogenzo Bendowa; Jijuyu Zanmai: “…like a hammer striking emptiness…”

FEELING STILLNESS
So I think it may be more helpful, and more immediately applicable, to focus attention on stillness, instead of an imagined silence. Silence and stillness suggest distinctly different actions. While both may be regarded as relative (and only relatively under any degree of control on our part), still, silence seems a bit more subjective. It seems impossible to work toward it, let alone achieve it, in any meaningful measure. I believe it was the great teacher Krishnamurti who said something like, “If you speak, It is silent. If you are silent, It speaks.” Leaving aside the ontological question of exactly what is “It” — so as not to slip down that slope — one could, paraphrasing, make the same case for stillness. As opposed to motion. To wit: If you move, It is still. If you are still, It moves

IT
So here, we might take it, in its simplest iteration (no pun, nor redundancy, intended), as simply indicating other. As opposed to self. We can begin to see some parallels with the teachings of Zen. Particularly, perhaps, those of Master Dogen in Genjokoan (no need to repeat Shobogenzo every time, one would hope). There we find his broad-based declarations, paraphrasing broadly, about going forth to the “ten thousand things” being delusion, whereas their coming forth being enlightenment. Something like that. My main point being that positing, or using, the apparent duality of self-other, subject-object, and so on, is a hoary and honorable expedient means to sneak around dualistic limitations.

So this is the point of stillness, or at least the point I want to make about it. We can definitely tell when we are fidgeting, wiggling our toes or fingers. Not being still. Or davening. Reciting Jewish prayers is often (always?) accompanied by a kind of graceful bouncing of the upper body, from the waist up, and in an arc of about 10-15 degrees, if observation and memory serves. A bit like the Buddhist bow, only with repetition. In zazen, we sometimes fend off stress with similar rhythmic motion.

MOVING STILLNESS
I first noticed this pulsating bounce in one of our senior women teachers, in whom it was quite pronounced, especially later in the sitting session. Then I noticed it in my own sitting. I don’t believe I picked it up from her, but that it was there on a subtle level all along. Whatever. The point is that when sitting for long sessions, you may notice that you are not sitting still at all, that there is still this sort of subtle pulsation in the posture, a kind of bouncing forward and back seeming to originate in the pelvic region and, it seems, roughly in time with the heartbeat. This assumes that you are quiet enough to hear, or still enough to feel, your heartbeat pulsing through chest, extremities, or sometimes through the body joint where you feel resistance (euphemism for “pain”).

When you become aware of this compulsive movement, or others on more subtle planes, then you can allow it to come to a stop. And thereby settle into a deeper stillness.

As we become more and more still, It begins to move, more and more. That is, we can then become aware of levels of movement on much finer scales, and in much subtler realms. This, I think, is the physical corollary to Master Dogen’s description of the “fine” or “subtle mind of nirvana.” In the realm of sensation, that is. So far we are addressing only the tactile level, the organs and nerves of the body and skin. This “sense organ” belongs to the realm (Skt. dhatu) that has as its object the various impressions of stress, pressure, temperature and friction, et cetera, to which the body is subjected. This is the main rationale for sitting upright in zazen — coming into balance (Samadhi) with gravity.

The sensations we can register on the gross level of the body, in other words, are just that — pretty gross. However, this does not mean that sensation is not active on a more subtle scale, on more sensitive planes. It is just that we have to enter into stillness to register it. Eventually, through a process of sensory adaptation, we go beyond ordinary sensation, and enter into what John Daido Loori referred to as “off-sensation.” That kind of extreme absence of feeling that is often experienced while falling asleep, or when half-awake.

BREATHING STILLNESS
The Zen approach to breath is also conducive to entering into stillness. Breathing is directly connected to subtle apprehension of the non-duality of motion and stillness. The breath cycle goes from moving, during inhalation, to stopping. Then exhalation moves the breath out of the lungs, and stops again. At the top and bottom of the breath, there is a moment of profound stillness. At that time, it seems everything has come to a full stop.

This is another meaning, or connotation, of Matsuoka Roshi’s universal equalizer, mokurai. The stillness is in the motion, motion in stillness. Simple point, but bears repetition. All such dual pairs (hot-cold; large-small; pain-pleasure, etc.) may be regarded as mutually defining. Complementary to each other, rather than opposite. And as always and only coexisting, if we may borrow Buckminster Fuller’s pointed phraseology.

As we become more still, dualities merge. Untold dimensions of motion open up — within and without — to which we have heretofore been completely oblivious. This is especially true in the dhatu of vision. Entering stillness in the realm of light and darkness.

SEEING STILLNESS
When we look at the fixed gaze that is practiced in zazen, we can see another example, or kind, of stillness. The eyes are said to be in constant motion, something like seven subtle movements — or saccades, rapid and irregular motions — per second. Ordinarily we are not aware of this movement, having long since adapted to it. But when we have practiced fixed gaze for some time, we become aware of motion within the field of vision itself, some of which probably forms a corollary to the saccades. But there is so much motion going on that it becomes difficult to associate it with any particular phenomenon of physiology. Unless you happen to be an optometrist or opthalmologist. In which case you would probably know too much to benefit from the wonder of living experience in zazen.

Practitioners frequently report impressions (not quite perceptions) of light and color, moving patterns. As well as recognizable images such as faces — of people and animals, even fantastic beings such as dragons. All in a day’s work in Zen circles. Settling into a deeper level of stillness in the realm of vision constitutes a more subtle effort than that engaged in the tactile realm. After all, the medium or field within which vision works is the high frequency realm of light itself. The retina is capturing radiant light, and translating it into image. Whereas the stimuli directly affecting the body is, again, on a gross level, speaking relatively, not judgmentally.

HEARING STILLNESS
The same analysis may be applied to hearing, which is somewhere in-between, on the sensory spectrum. Eardrums are impacted by compression waves in the air (water if you happen to be swimming). They respond by transmitting vibrations through the inner ear, discriminated and interpreted by the brain as various sounds. A more subtle dimension of hearing is entered into when one hears sounds emanating from “inside” the body and its organs, including the brain and central nervous system, as mentioned in the first section above. But again, stillness pervades. It is not silent, but is against a ground of stillness.

Note, in passing, that smelling and tasting are subject to a similar dynamic. In zazen, they adapt so quickly and thoroughly, however, as to be scarcely worth dwelling upon. The four dominant areas of observation under study in zazen consist of feeling, hearing, and seeing; and that old bugaboo, thinking. Smelling and tasting are subsumed under feeling.

It may be worth mentioning that aroma and flavor also have a heavily chemical component, which is present but less apparent, in all: in vision (“after image”) and the body (digestive processes). The mind as well — the brain secretes thoughts chemically.

PHYSICAL STILLNESS
Stillness, on the physical level, as manifested through the senses, is only the beginning. Again, engaging our conceptual metaphor, compartmentalizing holistic reality into manageable bits, we can regard stillness as operative on physical, mental and emotional levels, and, in a transcendental sense, on a spiritual level.

MENTAL STILLNESS
Being mentally calm appears to be possible while simultaneously being physically active. This is apparent in athletics, martial arts and extreme sports. And in that “slo-mo” mind that manifests when the car we are driving careens out of control at high speed. Sitting in zazen, however, it often flips the other way. Once we overcome the natural physical resistance to sitting very still, for what we feel are very long periods of time, the mind sometimes goes berserkers on us. Like a monkey trapped in a cage, or a sleeping dog awakened by a car wash, crashing round and round inside the skull, trying to get away.

But if we remember stillness as our guiding principle, we can register the frenzy against the background, which is the only way it rises to the level of perception to begin with. For there to be motion perceived, whether physical or mental, there has to be a ground of stillness. And vice-versa. Thus, the very manic quality of the monkey-mind (citta), is the proof positive of the wisdom-mind (bodhi). Always-and-only-coexistent (bodhicitta).

EMOTIONAL STILLNESS
Emotionally, of course, we can react in ways that make things worse, like feedback looping out of control. Or we can remember the stillness of the ocean depths underlying the violence of the hurricane, raging on the surface.

We cannot make the motion go away, leaving us alone in the bliss of absolute stillness. Stillness is co-dependent on motion. But the preponderance of existence is manifesting stillness. It can be seen in the repose of a pond that finds its own level. Or a stone in the garden that shimmers with the warmth of sunlight embracing its surface. Or the gossamer floating stillness of the heavenly bodies that are actually plummeting through space at breathtaking velocities.

SPIRITUAL STILLNESS
Spiritually, we can return to Master Dogen, in his description of what actually transpires in zazen, from the same text. He says that “all this, however, does not appear within perception, as it is unconstructedness in stillness; it is immediate realization. If practice and realization were two things, as it appears to the ordinary person, each could be recognized separately. But what can be met wit recognition is not realization itself, because realization is not reached by a deluded mind. In stillness, mind and object merge in realization and go beyond enlightenment.”

This stillness is represented in Zen as finding its center in the tanden, a central point in the pelvis, about two inches in and down from the navel. It is said that when we touch, or “sit on” this point, it is as if we are immersed in a field of energy, or ki. This vital energy is our life-source. The point of the tanden grows larger over time, until we are inside its sphere, with the center point still there, in our gut. When we move, it moves with us, so that we never move relative to it. It is our center, our primordial still point, from birth.

To enter into this primordial stillness, first we must become physically still. Buddha moved, surely. But when Buddha was still, he was very, very still. It is said that he stopped the sun in the sky. Everything in Universe is floating in this stillness. When we wake up to it, we are finally, irrevocably, at home with all beings. In stillness. Stillness.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/still-point-by-taiun-michael-elliston/feed/1New Year Revolutionhttp://sweepingzen.com/new-year-revolution/
http://sweepingzen.com/new-year-revolution/#commentsTue, 03 Jan 2012 11:31:02 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40923Yes, revolution, not resolution. A difference of two letters of the alphabet, s and v, separated by tu – Latin for “you.” Apropos of the orientation of this article — it is all about you. Herein we want to concern ourselves with revolution in the new year, not the mere resolutions that we may make for the new year ...

]]>Yes, revolution, not resolution. A difference of two letters of the alphabet, s and v, separated by tu – Latin for “you.” Apropos of the orientation of this article — it is all about you. Herein we want to concern ourselves with revolution in the new year, not the mere resolutions that we may make for the new year (or make up as we go along). We will come back to the idea of revolution, but first a diversionary foray into the vernacular: Why not resolution?

RESOLUTION

Resolution has the root resolve, which boasts multiple and varied connotations in its definitions set, according to the version of the New Oxford American Dictionary residing somewhere deep in the silicone bowels of my desktop Mac:

One meaning of resolve, the verb, is to “settle or find a solution to a problem, dispute or contentious matter.” Another is musical: “of a discord lead[ing] into a concord during the course of harmonic change.” Yet another goes to intent: “decide firmly on a course of action,” hopeful thrust of most New Year’s resolutions. In chemistry, to “separate into components.” Similar to “resolve something into… reduce a subject, statement, etc. by means of mental analysis into separate elements or a more elementary form” (shades of Sherlock). And, last example “of something seen at a distance turn[ing] into a different form when seen more clearly” (such as the glow of lanterns). Or the power “of optical or photographic equipment [to] separate or distinguish between closely adjacent objects” (e.g. Hubble’s renowned powers of observation).

There are more, but these provide more than enough to confuse the issue.

Resolution, the noun, then carries related baggage: “a firm decision to do or not to do something” the latter (not to do) being the one we most ordinarily associate with New Years. But also “the action of solving a problem…” The musical reference again, usually resolution back to the dominant following the 7th in the 1-4-5 progression so common to pop music. In medicine, “the disappearance of inflammation, or any other symptom or condition.” And again in chemistry, “the process of reducing or separating…into…components” (emphasis mine). Intriguingly, “the conversion of something abstract into another form.” Finally, “the smallest interval measurable by a scientific (esp. optical) instrument; the resolving power.” And a variant on that theme, “the degree of detail visible in a photographic or television image.” Hi-rez versus lo-rez, in digital-revolution-speak.

When we consider the tradition of making new year resolutions in the context of problem solving, it begs the question, What is the problem? that the resolution is meant to address. Most commonly noted may be that of being overweight, which has metastasized into generalized obesity. Not only in adults, but more sobering, in children — particularly those who, in spite of great girth, find themselves only subsisting, nutritionally speaking, on fatty fare provided by school lunch programs. Not to mention those species we select as “pets” — and then feed them to death.

But the issue of diet, or over-consumption, in America cannot be confined only to food for people and other beings. It pervades the culture. One of my favorite, insentient examples, is the Thunderbird, Ford’s iconic two-seater. What started out as a slim, nimble, stripped down, elegantly simple and sleek sports car, over successive generations (and by the time my mother owned one in the 1990s) had bloated up like a goose tied to a goose-stuffer, added a ton or so of unnecessary flab, and consequently looked and handled like any other middle-aged sedan.

Whatever the initial resolve of the design team, it had gone the way of most new years resolutions, submerged under the weight of incremental compromises with integrity, driven by the safe-bet, bottom-line mentality of the marketing mavens.

As an aside, political revolutions die the same slow death, wimping out over a few generations, with the same-old-sane-old, venal and banal patterns of human nature reasserting themselves not long after the blood has dried. E.g. Russia, or nearer to home, the “House of Representatives.”

In design circles, one strongly-held theory of problem-solving that has stood the test of time is that the solution is to be found in the definition of the problem. Problem definition becomes the best and shortest route to problem solving. Re-defining the problem from different contextual perspectives becomes a way of finding a more perfect solution, sometimes resulting in eliminating the identified problem in favor of a greater one. For example, one level 2 meta-solution to morphing Thunderbirds would be to design transportation systems such that the need for the automobile is eliminated entirely. Or, level 3, eliminate the need for transportation.

So in looking at our new year resolutions, a first step might be to define, or re-define, the problem that ostensibly provokes the resolution. In the case of being overweight, and resolving to diet to lose weight, is being overweight really the problem? It isn’t a problem if our goal or aspiration is not to meet the preferred parameters of attractiveness in society. It is not an issue if we do not mind dying prematurely of a heart attack or diabetes. Many members of the animal kingdom are what we would term overweight, and it isn’t a problem for them. What is the problem, exactly, with being overweight? Or lazy; chronically late; jealous; generally angry and a grouch — any of the various character and temperament traits we might criticize in ourselves and others? What is the fundamental problem that lies under the surface of these symptoms?

We resolve to diet, when what we are already eating is our diet. Diet is not a verb. We can change our diet, resolve to eat less, or to exercise more. In the future, that is. But we cannot live in the future. In Zen, we may sincerely resolve to really dedicate ourselves to meditate more. People say this all the time. But when can we meditate more? We cannot do so in the past — too late. We can “plan” to do so in the future, but when the future arrives, we may be too busy with other things, and have insufficient time to meditate more at the present moment, owing to demands and circumstances. Yet the present is the only time when we can meditate, whether more or less. When we are sitting in meditation, can we meditate more than we already are at that time? We can, but only if we are not really meditating. If we cannot, isn’t it because we are trying to measure our meditation in terms of time? If we meditate an hour instead of a half-hour, is that “more”? Remember, zazen, shikantaza, is not really a form of meditation. Another story.

If we look more closely at the perceived need to diet, or any symptoms of an “eating disorder,” we may see that something precedes the feeling of hunger itself. If we examine the felt need to meditate more, we may see that, likewise, something seems to be missing in the equation. Perhaps the perceived hunger is “the conversion of something abstract into another form.” Perhaps the objectification of meditation as a desirable but elusive goal — an achievable consumable — is the desire for “the disappearance of inflammation, or any other symptom or condition.” Meditation as cure, without the necessary diagnosis, or recognition of process.

If we practice meditation to fix what is wrong, have we really examined what makes us believe that something is wrong? Perhaps we are becoming infatuated with the process itself, and believe (all unconsciously of course) that compartmentalizing mediation into a neat box will help us to resolve the fundamental dilemma, in effect to “separate into components” or to “reduce a subject…by means of mental analysis into separate elements or a more elementary form.”

Zen, of course, has been parodied as an escape from suffering, but genuine Buddhism has never been about the avoidance of karmic consequence, however unpleasant. It may be that zazen allows a process of reductio ad absurdum, rendering any premise that we carry into it devoid of logic. And that that insight, in essence, is by definition a more elementary form. But this does not guarantee an outcome that is devoid of suffering. The “state of great emancipation” touted by Master Dogen (Self-fulfilling Samadhi; Jijuyu Zammai) comes in the midst of dukkha. If we choose to interpret it as emotional suffering, that is free will, or conditioning, working against us.

Master Dogen’s “backward step” expression applied to our own potentiality for direct insight seems related to resolution as “of something seen at a distance turn[ing] into a different form when seen more clearly.” It may seem strange to think that we are seeing ourselves at a distance. But when separation of self and other diminishes, when “mind and object merge in realization,” then it can be said that our experience has achieved intimacy with the self. An extreme close-up, to borrow jargon from photography.

And as to the power “of optical or photographic equipment [to] separate or distinguish between closely adjacent objects” our eyes are staring right into the Precious Mirror Samadhi:

A silver bowl filled with snow a heron hidden in the moon
Taken as similar they are not the same not distinguished their places are known

where the degree of resolution operates on the plane of Dogen’s “fine” or “subtle mind of Nirvana.” Here we approach the outermost realm of the reach of the “mind of practice,” where:

So minute it enters where there is no gap so vast it transcends dimension

Have another bite of the cookie, Alice! And finally, let’s end this side-trip with consideration of the ultimate in resolution, the micro realm of Planck’s constant (roughly the minimal size of energy quanta), and the “chronon,” or smallest particle of time (ksana in Sanskrit). The “theory of intantaneousness” of the universe (Establishment of the Bodhi Mind; Hotsu Bodaishin) suggests that reality has a kind of refresh-rate. That’s right — that the whole shebang is arising, abiding, changing and disappearing every instant — so rapidly that we experience the illusion of continuity, much like seeing figures in motion on a television or computer monitor. Thus everything that we can and do register as perception is, in effect, a resonance on that fundamental frequency. Sense-data received and processed by the nervous system appears to represent a spectrum of frequencies from low-end tactile stimuli to high-end visual light, with auditory et cetera somewhere in between. It is also posited that we are beset by sounds and electromagnetic frequencies beyond our kin, impressions that we are not tuned to receive, at least consciously.

In meditation, it seems that the apparent barriers to these ultra- and infra- extremes of spectrum become less restrictive, even moot, so that we become more acutely aware of the minute as well as the vast. And, in fact, can find no dividing line between them. It becomes a question of whether or not consciousness itself is limited to the frequencies of the sensory apparatus through which it seems to engage the world. In other words, “the smallest interval measurable by a scientific (esp. optical) instrument; the resolving power” or “the degree of detail visible in a photographic or television image” may not be what we presume it to be, when it comes to our instrument, our body-mind. In zazen, we “drop off” body and mind.

Thus, one might make a new year resolution to optimize the limits of the resolution of our system, without pre-conceptual bias. Or, similarly, we might resolve to maximize our bandwith, by dumping unneeded data files and outdated applications that are only taking up space and slowing down our processor. New tee-shirt/bumper sticker: ZEN: Increase Your Bandwidth!

REVOLUTION

Now for a brief capping verse on revolution. New year’s resolutions are made at a time when the earth, we think, is at a relatively distinct point in its orbit around the sun. One year marks arevolution. But that point is no more distinct on an absolute basis than the revolution (rotation) of the planet itself (which we are told is slowing), or than any one “moment” of time.

So, that there is a new year, is an abstraction, not to say delusion. When we closely examine what we mean by the “stroke of midnight on new year’s eve,” we begin to get a queasy feeling. Like the dance of the celestial spheres, or the teacups on the tilt-a-whirl at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, we tend to lose our bearing. If we stay the course, however, we may “go beyond all inverted views” — such as the very idea that there is any meaningful reality to new year’s eve. And in doing so, we may open the door to real time, alien territory to measurement.

Revolution holds an emotionally-charged, positively powerful inducement as well. If we can somehow mark the time, however arbitrarily, we can seem to put the past behind us, and enter into a new world of possibility. We can start over, take another turn, have a do-over. This is the hope offered by Zen Buddhism, the only real hope in the world. But the real revolution begins at home, in thunderous silence, finding stillness in motion, the Buddha’s great activity, in real time on the cushion. It goes with you when you arise. Please join the revolution in 2012. JUST sit.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/new-year-revolution/feed/0Corporations are people, my friendhttp://sweepingzen.com/corporations-are-people-my-friend/
http://sweepingzen.com/corporations-are-people-my-friend/#commentsTue, 15 Nov 2011 11:32:41 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40926This remark, taken from the headlines and attributed to Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner (du jour), will surely be used as a political football in the upcoming (read ongoing) campaign for POTUS in 2012, at least as long as Mr. Romney stays in the race. The statement can be, and thus will be, interpreted as ...

This remark, taken from the headlines and attributed to Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner (du jour), will surely be used as a political football in the upcoming (read ongoing) campaign for POTUS in 2012, at least as long as Mr. Romney stays in the race.

The statement can be, and thus will be, interpreted as reflective of as anti-populist a stance as one might imagine, in spite of its author’s pose with tassled loafer on hay bale (this was Iowa after all). In the context of the recent Supreme Court ruling claiming that corporations may enjoy the benefits of persons (for example spending the corporation’s capital assets to back any candidate corporate leadership wishes to support), it projects a more grim and triumphal tone. Especially coming from one who has personally benefited from being the head of a corporation to the tune of 190 to 250 million dollars in net worth. Conflated with an earlier decision that defines the use of capital as “free speech,” it takes on menacing overtones of Big Brother — government as your worldwide, friendly neighborhood uber-corporation. Government of the people, by the hireling Congress, for the corporations.

But the expression can be interpreted more benignly as simply asserting that corporations are, after all, comprised of people. People who, incidentally, form said corporations in order to establish a legal buffer between themselves and ethical, civil, criminal and other unpleasant consequences, which, resulting from the actions of the corporation, might otherwise impact them personally. In this respect, a corporation is not a person. The persons making up the corporation are shielded from the results of actions which, taken as a mere person, they would have to face. In this sense a corporation is the anti-person.

If we step aside from the obvious, but biased, political interpretations of the assertion that corporations are people, instead taking it on face value as a metaphor, and nothing more, we can draw some interesting parallels, and perhaps come to some conclusions.

If we compare a corporation to a person, or conversely, look at a person as a corporation, we might see that the head, or brain, of a corporation would be analogous to the CEO. The COO might be relegated to some regulating function, perhaps of the lymph system or the digestive tract. Corporations, we are told, are in business to make profit (unless they are pretending otherwise, as a not-for-profit corporation). Profit might then be related to the life-blood of the biological person, in the form of oxygen derived from breathing, and nutrients absorbed from eating. Without becoming too graphic, we could then regard the waste from this process — exhausted through the lungs via exhalation; excreted through the bowls; voided through the bladder; evaporated through the pores of the skin — as equivalent metaphorically to landfill waste, pollution, effluent, and other outputs of the process of consumption, attributable to a given corporation. Perfectly natural.

And, from the perspective of environmental and social responsibility, we can see that a corporation, as a person, should not be expected to be any more diligent about limiting their consumption, or cleaning up after themselves, than we might expect of a biological (real) person, such as ourselves. How many of us can claim, as individuals, to be living out our minimal carbon footprint, for example? Why should we expect a corporation, consisting of persons much like us, to do any better?

If we can accept a corollary relation between the constituent parts of a person, and those of a corporation, we can begin to see some cracks in the metaphor. For example, if I, as a person, commit a crime, and am caught in the act, my head cannot anticipate this eventuality and depart to join another body, before the crime comes to light. But the chief executive, the entire executive committee, as well as underlings in-the-know, can in fact bail out and join another corporation, leaving some other unknowing parts of the organization holding the bag when the truth comes out, if it ever does.

Another stark difference is that a corporation can outlive its leadership, whereas a person cannot presently survive the loss of its brain or nervous system, though it can lose a lower organ or two, if replaced in time, and its peripheral extremities can be safely amputated.

So a corporation, a “body” consisting of interchangeable parts, can have the same rights and perquisites of a person, whose parts are significantly less replaceable. Though by the sci-fi aspirations of today’s organ-transplant industry, the day may be fast approaching when we can replace everything but the brain (the supposed center of self-consciousness) and go on moving from corporeal body to corporeal body, as peripheral parts wear out.

And, of course, the only people who will be able to pay the tab for this kind of immortality will be those titans of industry who can command the million-billions of dollars in profits their non-corporeal corporations funnel to them. Or, as they would put it, the millions or billions they have “earned.” Which brings up another subject for another time, the confusion of owning with earning.

Big picture, this entire scenario could be regarded impersonally as just another example of Hegel’s theory of the synthesis of form in action. The person appeared, at one point in history, as the anti-thesis, emerging out of the inchoate corporation of the tribe, and became the new thesis, the “great man” of history. The corporation appeared later on, as early civilizations and hierarchical societies, now international businesses, as the anti-thesis to the person, as well as to local, national governments.

Nowadays we witness the person morphing to more closely resemble the corporation, through investing and personally incorporating, for example; and the corporation taking on more and more attributes characteristic of the person, most visibly for the sake of public relations (good citizen campaigns), but more assertively for political power.

Following the theoretical model, eventually the person and the corporation would merge in synthesis, establishing the new thesis. This would be the person as corporate entity, to complement the current thesis of the corporation as person. For example, at birth, an individual could be given corporate status through an IPO, with startup capital fund of say $1000, so as to be able to compete, through the magic of compound interest, with all other corporate entities they may encounter in life.

What would be the new, the next, antithesis to appear on the horizon — inevitably, according to the theory? Because the person and the corporation cannot truly merge in complete synthesis, this may be useless, fallacious, idle speculation. I certainly hope so.

At least some of the beneficiaries of corporate excess and government largesse, notably Warren Buffet, are ‘fessing up — and facing up — to the fact that they don’t really deserve the level of corporate effluent flowing their way. They have run out of ways to spend for personal, consumption purposes, so that has lost its original luster. The idea has arisen that perhaps sharing some of the largesse with those peripheral parts of the great international corporation, citizens at large — through the mechanism of government redistribution of wealth, the big bugaboo — might be a better use of the funds than they can come up with, all their charitable activities notwithstanding.

The corporation is indeed a person in effect, in that it reflects and projects the pettiness, short-sightedness, and venality of those huddling in its corner offices and board rooms. Or, on the other hand, their humility, generosity of spirit, their magnanimous and nurturing minds. Perhaps corporate consciousness will come to exhibit an evolution, in which it matures — as if it were actually a person, currently in its self-absorbed adolescence, pimples and all.

After all, all corporations, again, consist primarily of persons (plus impersonal material assets, lest we forget). And in the process of maturing, perhaps corporations will develop such seemingly anti-corporate qualities as compassion and wisdom. But only if the persons inside their “minds” do. Since corporations, plural, are apparently here to stay (until they merge into one mega-corporation — call it Earth, Inc.), intelligent evolution may be the most we can hope for. Perhaps the next Axial Age will portend the dawning of corporate spirituality.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/corporations-are-people-my-friend/feed/0Lineage & Legacy of the STOhttp://sweepingzen.com/lineage-legacy-of-the-sto/
http://sweepingzen.com/lineage-legacy-of-the-sto/#commentsThu, 03 Nov 2011 15:25:10 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40918To learn about the Lineage and Legacy of the Silent Thunder Order, watch the narrated slide show, or read the transcript below: The Sangha of the Silent Thunder Order traces its origin to Master Eihei Dogen, founder of Soto Zen in 13th-Century Japan. A few generations later Master Keizan popularized Dogen Zen throughout Japan. Dogen ...

To learn about the Lineage and Legacy of the Silent Thunder Order, watch the narrated slide show, or read the transcript below:

The Sangha of the Silent Thunder Order traces its origin to Master Eihei Dogen, founder of Soto Zen in 13th-Century Japan. A few generations later Master Keizan popularized Dogen Zen throughout Japan. Dogen is often called the “father” of Soto Zen in Japan, while Keizan is called its “mother.” We have chosen cloud, or “un” in Japanese, as the family name for members of our Order, after the dharma name my teacher gave me: Taiun, meaning “Great Cloud.”

Our lineage founder, Zengaku Soyu Matsuoka Roshi, was born in 1912 and died in 1997. He came to the United States in 1939, when he was just 27 years old. He said his mother told him, “go die in America.” He was tireless in propagating Soto Zen to Americans, first on the West Coast and later in the Midwest, and one of the first to promote the practice of Zen meditation for westerners. Sensei, as he asked us to call him, was a student and friend of Daisetz Suzuki, the famous scholar who popularized Rinzai Zen in the West. A black-belt in Judo, he was very active in the martial arts, adviser to the Chicago Police Department and National Karate Association, promoting the practice of zazen.

By the 1960s when we first met, Matsuoka Roshi had established the Chicago Zen Buddhist Temple, where he conducted my lay ordination, when I was about 27 years old.
In 1970 I moved to Atlanta, and Sensei moved to Long Beach, leaving my senior dharma brother Kongo Roshi in charge of Chicago. We visited each other frequently during the next two decades, following Sensei’s wish to “keep contact to each other.” He developed a dedicated Sangha in Long Beach, training Disciples and teachers, many of whom still actively practice Zen. He often performed secular ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, and gave annual speaking tours in Japan and Korea, as well as across the US. Before and after the war, he was known as a peacemaker and bridge-builder between the two former enemies.

I began offering Zen meditation in 1974 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. We incorporated the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in1977, and so will celebrate our 35th anniversary in 2012. Having moved from location to location for about a decade, in the 1980s, we settled into a one-room, stone-walled zendo in the Candler Park area. Over the 80s and 90s the Atlanta Sangha grew, and others affiliated with us. We welcomed many new members, and trained a growing faculty of Disciples and teachers. Many formed strong bonds with the Sangha, and are still active at Atlanta or an Affiliate group. Others have come and gone, some setting up their own sitting groups, wherever their lives have taken them. We celebrate Sangha with joy, just as we greet each New Year, with the understanding that Sangha, too, is impermanent, like clouds drifting through the sky, no barriers anywhere.

With the limitations of the Candler Park facility, we sought out other locations such as a summer camp at Lake Allatoona, accommodating much larger groups, and allowing us to hold longer sesshin in the spring and fall. Currently, we are exploring a wonderful opportunity for establishing a rural retreat center about an hour from our urban location. There, in a secluded, arboreal mountain hollow, we hope to be able to offer our 2012 program of longer retreats and practice periods in a bucolic setting.
In the year 2000, following a conference on Master Dogen in Palo Alto, California, where I first met Shohaku Okumura, we co-sponsored a weekend with Emory University’s Department of Religion, “Traces of Dogen,” featuring scholars as well as practitioners.

We are proactive in outreach programs, such as the annual Japanfest, where Sensei’s niece, Yumi Matsuoka, demonstrated Shin Kendo, or “steel sword.” From time to time we give public talks on topical issues, such as a series on Zen and addiction, at various venues in Atlanta, and throughout the Southeast, as well as our affiliate centers.
About 2001, having outgrown Candler Park, the move to our present facility enabled us to offer a far more extensive program, with greater capacity for residency, and food service for retreats. Over the years we have refurbished and renovated the facility as needed, and as time and circumstances allowed. This, in turn, allowed us to expand and enhance our daily, weekly, and annual program of Zen meditation and teaching. The more spacious accommodations, while modest, make it possible for members of our far-flung Sangha to stay over for intensive training in formal as well as informal aspects of Zen. We continue to “take good care of the practice place,” as the saying goes, to make it as warm and welcoming as possible, as a practice center, and second home, for our Sangha members.

Ceremonies following the path of Zen Buddhism are offered to the Sangha, from Initiation, or Jukai, to Discipleship and Priesthood, to enable and encourage those who wish to progress along the formal path of Zen. They are thereby enabled to assume positions of responsibility in the Sangha, whether at the home temple or in their respective affiliate centers. In this way, we have been able to serve the growing needs of the larger Sangha, led by members of the Order, who are thoroughly trained in the practices of Soto Zen, and able to progress through the various training stages.

All this, of course, has been made possible through the efforts of our contemporary teachers, in addition to those of Matsuoka Roshi. To learn the formal requirements, we visited Akiba Roshi, then Soto Shu’s Bishop of North America, as well as Shohaku Okumura and others, in Los Angeles. Akiba Roshi later visited us in Atlanta, a year or so before we renovated the zendo.

Thanks to the magnanimous mind and kind ministrations of Akiba Roshi, and especially Okumura Roshi and Seirin Barbara Kohn, Sensei, of the Uchiyama and Suzuki lineages respectively, we proceeded together through the prerequisites for Transmission. Honoring the genuine Zen practice of our Sangha, they led us through the necessary steps to formal recognition within the larger community of Soto Zen. It required several sesshin at Sanshinji and Austin Zen Centers. After Barbara had conducted my formal Novice Priest ceremony, or Shukke Tokudo, in Atlanta, we spent a 90-day practice period, or Ango, at the Austin Zen Center, in the summer of 2007, practicing daily as head student, or Shuso, under the auspices of Suzuki Roshi’s lineage. While there I had the distinct honor of sharing a room with another student, and most memorably, with Meow-shin, the Zen cat.

Austin Zen Center hosted a Soto Zen Buddhist Association conference that summer, with many senior Zen teachers attending, and Barbara taking a bow at the end of skit night. At the end of the Ango, we held the Shuso ceremony, including Hossen Shikki, responding to koans from the Sangha. During the three months, a great many of Barbara’s students and guest teachers came to the center, and while the practice period was enjoyable, a photo of me on the patio reveals how I really felt about being away from home: not a happy camper. Later that year, Barbara and Okumura Roshi came to Atlanta to lead a week-long retreat culminating in Transmission, or Shiho, which Matsuoka Roshi called the “PhD of Zen.”

We offer a robust program of frequent guest teachers, who are invited to Atlanta for various events, including ceremonies, leading retreats and dharma dialog, which we hope to expand in the new year. We have been honored to host many Zen teachers, from many lineages, including Barbara, Akiba Roshi and Okumura Roshi, as well as Teijo Munnich, Therese Fitzgerald, Anshin Thomas, and senior dharma brothers from the Matsuoka line. We also welcome scholars, and conduct conferences with authors, such as Grace Shierson, David Chadwick and Bill Porter, better known as Red Pine; and from the next generation, Brad Warner. And we have had the great pleasure of listening to the wisdom of Tibetan leaders such as Geshe Lobsang, and Achok Rinpoche, of the Loseling Institute. We host Interfaith dialog with religious leaders of any and all faiths. And we feature guest speakers from the arts and sciences, such as Dr. David Finkelstein.

The living legacy of our lineage is the Silent Thunder Order Sangha, a network of Zen centers, sitting and study groups in the United States and Canada, as well as rugged individuals pursuing Zen practice on their own, and staying in contact via the Internet. We hold monthly Skype conferences and offer one-on-one practice discussions and dharma dialogs as well as personal interviews, or dokusan.

“Cloud” is an appropriate symbol for Sangha, as it is ever-changing. People come and go, sometimes disappearing for years, and then reappearing to rejoin the Sangha. The legacy bequeathed to us by Master Dogen and Matsuoka Roshi, as well as the lineages of Uchiyama Roshi and Suzuki Roshi, is nothing less, and nothing more, than the Three Treasures of Buddhism: Sangha, the harmonious community we belong to and serve; Dharma, the compassionate teachings; and Buddha, our original nature, which we share with Shakyamuni Buddha and all sentient beings. The central, seminal practice and seal of this truth is zazen, Zen meditation, sitting upright in self-fulfilling Samadhi.
Please join with us this November, as a treasured member of our Sangha, in observing the birth and death of Matsuoka Roshi, by celebrating his legacy and honoring our lineage. Remember that next year, in November of 2012, we will see the 100th anniversary of his birth, and the 15th anniversary of his passing. I am sure he is smiling down on us from Tusita heaven. Or laughing at us, perhaps. Please continue with your practice, no matter where you are. As Sensei would often say, “Don’t give up!”

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/lineage-legacy-of-the-sto/feed/0Zen Monkey Business – Part 2http://sweepingzen.com/zen-monkey-business-part-2/
http://sweepingzen.com/zen-monkey-business-part-2/#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2011 11:21:49 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40915Last month in transcribing the talk given at our Wichita, KS affiliate, the Southwind Sangha in September, about halfway through the recording, we reviewed the wonderful Chinese poem modified by Master Dogen, following the ancient tradition of transmitting the teachings orally: So Zazenshin: Acupuncture Needle for Zazen. I’ll repeat the first line twice, and some of ...

]]>Last month in transcribing the talk given at our Wichita, KS affiliate, the Southwind Sangha in September, about halfway through the recording, we reviewed the wonderful Chinese poem modified by Master Dogen, following the ancient tradition of transmitting the teachings orally:

So Zazenshin: Acupuncture Needle for Zazen. I’ll repeat the first line twice, and some of these lines repeat, anyway. I’ll repeat the first line twice, so that you can catch up. It’s a form of hear-say; as soon as you hear it, try to say it. You don’t have to say it loud, but just try to say it, and try to hear and say what I am saying. This is the way the teachings were handed down the first four hundred years or so. They weren’t written down anywhere. You couldn’t go read the book. You had to go listen. And you had to chant, along with the people, if you were going to learn these (teachings). So I think you’ll find it an interesting exercise (based on Shohaku Okumura trans.):

The essential function of buddhas
and the functioning essence of ancestors
actualized within non-thinking
manifested within non-interacting

Actualized within non-thinking
actualization is by nature intimate
manifested within non-interacting
manifestation is by nature intimate

The actualization by nature intimate
never has defilement
manifestation by nature verification
never has distinction between absolute and relative

The intimacy without defilement
is dropping off without relying on anything
Verification beyond distinction between absolute and relative
is making effort without aiming at it

The water is clear to the earth
a fish is swimming like a fish
The sky is vast and extends to the heavens
a bird is flying like a bird

After reciting a second time, we followed with a discussion period, examining the various things that stood out, remembering that no one had any printed text to refer to in the discussion (Zazenshin is available in our “Zen Practice at Home” manual of daily liturgy). Toward the end of last month’s segment, the question of non-thinking stood out, and is the basis for the beginning of this segment:

How about you?

Oh, just the fact of non-thinking. I don’t know; that just caught my attention, actually.

Actualized within non-thinking. It refers to Fukanzazengi, which is another, the first tract that Dogen wrote down, when he was only 25 years old, maybe 26. When he came back from China, he had students already, and they wanted him to write something they could refer to when he was not around. Fukanzazengi means Universal Principles of Seated Meditation, orPromotion for Zazen, that kind of thing. And he actually refers to an incident there, these koans— you’ve heard about koans? A koan is (clapping hands), You know the sound of two hands clapping. (holding up one hand) What is the sound of one hand?

It’s an illogical riddle that is meant to cast something into your mind that you can’t solve with the monkey mind. You know, you can’t analyze it or figure it out. So you have to… penetrate it, or go beyond it. Go beyond thinking, or go beyond reason or logic, in order to get it. If you answer that question, what is the sound of one hand? And the teacher accepts your answer, they say the teacher may then say, how big is that sound? (laughter) So there’s always deeper, deeper, deeper, right?

So he quotes this incident where a teacher is sitting there in zazen, and his student comes along, and says — and this is unbelievable that you would have your teacher sitting there in zazen, and you would say something to him; you would bother him (laughter) — “What are you thinking, sitting there in that mountain-still state?” You know, like a mountain. And he said, “I am thinking not-thinking.” This is all translated, of course, from Chinese. And he said, “How can you think not-thinking?” And the teacher said, “It is not thinking.”

Well, Dogen said, this is non-thinking. When we’re sitting, we may think, or we may not think. There are periods of time when thinking stops, and you’re just not thinking anything in particular — ding-dong — you know. And then as soon as you maybe recognize, Well hey, I haven’t been thinking for a while — suddenly, you’re thinking. (laughter)

But the point is, it doesn’t matter whether we’re thinking or not. That’s not what we’re doing. It doesn’t have any real influence or effect on what we’re doing. Now in school, and when we are involved in projects, some of our thoughts are very important. A thought that occurs to you during sitting may be lie a Eureka! or an A-ha! moment.

So a lot of teachers, myself included, recommend keeping a notepad next to where you sit. When something like that happens, just jot down some keywords, so you can get back to that later. Because our thoughts, our projects, and so forth, the engagement that we have with society, is important, and is part of our practice. So we want to do it well. So you don’t want to be sitting here, you know, ruminating, and worrying that you’re going to forget that important thought. That’s just getting in the way. So you just jot it down. Then you come back to this.

So that does two things. It does what Dogen says early in Fukanzazengi: he says “Set aside all everyday concerns.” When you’re doing zazen; set them aside. So this is skillful means, or an expedient means, or a trick, you might say, for setting aside our everyday concerns. We jot them down.

Because I’m a designer, sometimes when a visual idea occurs to me, I do a quick sketch (gesturing). So I won’t forget that. You know, the way something should go together. It just occurs to me. Because when you’re sitting your mind is much more clear than usual. So there is no reason not to do that.

The second thing it does, that I think is much more important, is that it brings us back to this(pointing to floor) — and it says, Well then, what is this? — if it’s not that stuff (pointing to notepad). What is this about, right? What is zazen about? It’s not about that stuff; we are setting that aside; returning, to what? (giggles)

So that question, I think, is a rhetorical question; it’s not necessary to answer. And in fact, if you try to answer it, you’re getting in your own way again. But if you continue to ask that question,What is this about? What am I doing? (laughing)…you know. Not Why? — “Why” is a religious question — we don’t ask religious questions in Zen. But, What am I doing? You know, What is this? So… I think that’s important.

Well, Dogen is referring to this incident, between this monk and his teacher. The teacher is stating, out of this state of insight, or enlightenment, that this is not thinking. It is something that is primordial to thinking.

You might say thinking is, on this upper level (pointing to the skull), outer cortex is all the highest levels of thought. In Japanese, called “third-nen.” Philosophy, science, mathematics, all the greatest poetry, discoveries, and so forth — outer cortex stuff. As we move into the inner cortex, it’s more simple, “second-nen.” Still name-and-form — namarupa in Sanskrit — still you know, we’re not going out of our mind, here; it’s still ordinary consciousness. But it’s not so complicated, not saying, Oh: grass mat; that’s a kind of carpet; carpet consists of cotton; carpet is made from… (giggling) you know, on and on and on and on… made in Dalton, Georgia(laughter). Thousands and thousands and thousands of interconnections and relationships. This is all third-nen, outer cortex. It’s not very useful when we are doing zazen. It’s like, I’m getting off, again; jot it down if it’s important.

We think great scientists, great poets, great authors, have come to their insights through a process that is very similar to zazen. Including Einsten. He describes his “thought experiments” as very visceral, gut-level stuff. It wasn’t actually thinking, he said.

So as we proceed in this way, you can see we are going from very complex, outer, third-nen stuff, to second-nen, to first-nen, where you might say it is just simple awareness, of being in environment. So Zen poses, perhaps, that there is a zero-nen level. There is a primordial level of consciousness, in which you cannot even say that there is subject/object.

Zazen, sometimes called shikantaza, meaning “just precisely sitting,” this form of meditation, is not really a meditation, ultimately. When we focus on the posture, or we focus on the breath, then it’s subject/object. So that’s a meditation, right? If we focus on counting our breaths, that’s a meditation. The subject is focusing and meditating upon an object.

But ultimately, because this all simplifies and clears itself out, at one point there is no more subject meditating upon an object. It’s called objectless meditation, where subject and object have come together. In Precious Mirror Samadhi, it says it’s like form and reality reflecting each other [form and reflection behold each other]. As if it’s one. It’s not two. It is definitely not-two. We don’t assert that it is one.

So this is rather mystical-sounding, but if you think about it, it is kind of a long-term, natural process, just as you adapt to the weight of your clothes. You and your clothes have “become one,” right? When I mention the weight of your clothes, you can feel them again; you can separate subject/object. If you sit on this cushion long enough, your butt becomes numb. (laughter) And then there’s no more cushion; there’s no more separation of cushion, just this fuzzy area of sensation.

So this process continues, and deepens and deepens and deepens, until self-and-other are no longer separate. Mind-and-body; subject-and-object. This is why it is called “objectless meditation,” which is a contradiction in terms. (laughter) So Zazenshin is pointing at this very closely, you know: “…making effort without aiming at it.” We’re still making effort, but there is no object. Very difficult, in a way. Existentially, very difficult. Not like most other things. So anything else on Zazenshin?

[Announcements]

So, let’s close with Dogen’s Vow, which is a little longer, but it speaks to a little more of the philosophy, of why we do this. Zazenshin is a poem, pointing at sort of the essential nature of zazen. This one is why we practice Zen, you might say. We can do it the same way. “Dogen’s Vow: Eihei…” is Dogen’s name. Eihei means “eternal peace”; that’s one of his dharma names.Eihei-ji is the monastery established by him; it’s the circular flower on your wagesa, which represents Eihei-ji; the other flower represents Sojiji, which was founded by Keizan, a few generations after. These are the two main [Soto] training temples in Japan today. So Eihei Hoso Kotsuganmon; this is “Dogen’s Vow.” Again I’ll say the first line twice… (reciting)

We vow with all beings from this life on throughout countless lives
to hear the true dharma
That upon hearing it no doubt will arise in us nor will we lack in faith
That upon meeting it we shall renounce worldly affairs and maintain the
buddhadharma
And that in doing so the great earth and all beings together will attain the
buddha way
Although our past evil karma has greatly accumulated indeed being the
cause and condition of obstacles in practicing the way
May all Buddhas and Ancestors who have attained the buddha way be
compassionate to us and free us from karmic effects allowing us to
practice the way without hindrance
May they share with us their compassion which fills the boundless
universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings
Buddhas and Ancestors of old were as we we in the future shall be
Buddhas and Ancestors
Revering Buddhas and Ancestors we are one Buddha and one Ancestor
awakening Bodhimind we are one Bodhimind
Because they extend their compassion to us freely and without limit we
are able to attain budhahood and let go of the attainment

Therefore the Ch’an mas-ter Lung-ya said:

Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened
In this life save the body it is the fruit of many lives
Before Buddhas were enlightened they were the same as we
Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old

Quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions as this
practice is the exact transmission of a verified Buddha
Repenting in this way one never fails to receive profound help from all
Buddhas and Ancestors
By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the
Buddha
We melt away the root of transgressions by the power of our repentance

This is the true and simple color of true practice of the true mind of faith
of the true body of faith
(Trans. Shohaku Okumura-roshi)

So, what stood out for you there, if anything?

Sounds awfully religious.

We’re getting a lot of help from the buddhas and bodhisattvas, aren’t we? (laughter) Remember, usually, in these things when he speaks of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, that’s you! So the buddha who is having this realization, and helping you, is you. (laughing)

It’s funny that she said it sounded religious, because I felt like I had a religious experience, (laughter) and I’m atheist. So it was a very pleasant feeling.

I’ve memorized these things by setting them to music. But I also memorize them…my brother is — my older brother (I only have one brother) — my brother is a jazz pianist and a teacher of jazz and classical music. He teaches people how to just play the instrument, if they are trained classically — how to improvise. But he said when he is teaching a person to play a piece of notation, he has them memorize the last measure first. You may have heard of this technique. Then the measure before that; and then the measure before that. So that when you memorize that measure, and then you memorize the next one, you can go all the way to the end. There’s no blockage. You memorize the third measure, fourth, and so on, you can go all the way to the end. In a piece you’re memorizing.

So I started applying that to this, and I did the last two lines:

This is the true and simple color of true practice of the true mind of faith
of the true body of faith

And I couldn’t get that “This is the true and simple color of true practice…” Why would you say “color“? You know if you think about it, we say its “colored by this” or “this has the color of that…” [Simon] Garfunkle said that, “I want it a little more purple…” (laughing) He didn’t have any technical ability in music. (laughter) The orchestra would have to figure out what he meant bypurple. [Paul] Simon did, you know. But he was long gone. (laughter) So:

This is the true and simple color of true practice

And then:

of the true mind of faith of the true body of faith

We would say: of the true body of faith of the true mind of faith. What you say last — like you pointed out with the fish and the birds — what he said last is always he most important. So thebody is more important in Buddhism, because it is the concrete reality we work with. The mindis this, you know — Dogen said if the cart won’t go, you know, do you beat the ox? Or do you beat the cart? (laughing) He says, most people say you beat the ox, which we think of as the mind. We make the mind work, we make the mind behave. He said, I say you beat the cart. You make the body sit. If the body sits, the mind has to follow. So, here, the true mind of faith, and the true body of faith, the true body of faith is the important thing. That’s what we have to work with. This body that we take action in.

In our zazen, body-mind cannot separate; this is the true practice, the true color, of the true practice. And that’s that part. Elsewhere you will see something similar, where they won’t say thepast, present and future — in this practice there is no past, present and future — they will say nopast, future and present. Because they will end in the present, which is the practical place where we are, where we can take action. This is the practical side of Zen.
Anything else on that? Then we go to lunch. So there’s not going to be much, I can tell. (laughter)

Brunch.

Brunch.

I found something useful; somebody mentioned religious experience. Early on I had a similar problem with that word, and I brought it to you, and I said “What’s the nature of faith in Buddhism” in dokusan, and you said, “Doubt is what faith feels like, much as fear is what courage feels like.” And that completely changed what the word means in Buddhism for me, because it’s not the Christian expectation of having somebody else do something for you. It’s a reliance on recognizing what’s going on inside. And so, that to me is what the difference is. If that helps anybody else, that’s why I am putting it out there.

Yeah, the true body of faith is doubt; the emotional content of faith is doubt. The more doubt you feel, the more faith you’re exercising. Just as the more fear you feel, the more courage you are exercising. If you don’t simply become paralyzed.

Action is the way of Zen. Action is the thought of Zen. In any situation, we have to take action. And the action that we take then creates karmic consequences. Even if it’s as neutral as just breathing for the next five minutes, we stay alive, right? We stop breathing for the next five minutes, we’re dead.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/zen-monkey-business-part-2/feed/0Zen Monkey Business – Part 1http://sweepingzen.com/zen-monkey-business-part-1/
http://sweepingzen.com/zen-monkey-business-part-1/#commentsMon, 01 Aug 2011 11:19:49 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40912It has occurred to me that stand-up comics are the closest thing we have to Zen masters in our popular culture. The best ones, anyway. Lewis Black. (laughter) The list goes on. A comic’s role has probably changed over time, to some degree, beginning with the court jester. Different ones are different. But their role ...

]]>It has occurred to me that stand-up comics are the closest thing we have to Zen masters in our popular culture. The best ones, anyway. Lewis Black. (laughter) The list goes on. A comic’s role has probably changed over time, to some degree, beginning with the court jester. Different ones are different. But their role is pretty much to skewer our view of reality, right? And the reason we laugh is because they point out something that is so obvious, once you can hear it, they help you see it.

Speaking of hearing, can everybody hear? I speak a little loudly so that those of us who are getting older have an opportunity to hear. So when you ask questions please speak up a little bit. I am also recording; sometimes the questions and answers are compelling or interesting, at least, in these exchanges. Remember when this recorder used to be about this big, and weighed about eighty pounds? Nowadays they are so small you are mostly in danger of losing them rather than getting a hernia carrying them around.

This weekend we had a lot of ceremonies, which is unusual. I think the robes and the ceremonies are kind of the worst part of Zen. We don’t, sort of, want to give them up, because this is the theater, this is what people expect, this is how it looks, right? I mean, if we were in cat-in-the-hat suits, it wouldn’t look like Zen. (laughing) Comedians understand this. (laughter) You have to look the part.

My teacher, Matsuoka Roshi — his picture is around here somewhere — when we would go speak of Zen in public, he would always want us to dress the part. We would put on robes and usually a white shirt and tie, western style, because we didn’t have all these Japanese accoutrements at the time. He wasn’t very high on formality, but he didn’t want us representing Zen in a very sloppy or casual way, because it was too important.

He came over in 1939, so 1940, that was before I was born, believe it or not, so, what is that, about 70-some years? And we have seen so many changes in Zen since then, that we’re seeing a lot of what he worried about coming true. You know, that there’s an over-emphasis on intellectual Zen — reading all the books, then you think you know everything there is to know about Zen — instead of practicing. There are a lot of people who are self-declared Zen teachers, or self-declared Buddhist teachers.

So, some of the formality, there are reasons for the formality. It’s a little bit like getting a PhD — a peer review process.

In those days, he was worried about “book-learning,” because you could virtually read all of the books that had been translated into English in the 1950s and 1960s. Now, it would be impossible. You could spend the rest of your life, but you couldn’t read all the books that have been published in English about Zen. Including a lot of very good things that have been translated from India, China and Japan, that have been translated only in the last fifty years. A lot of the stuff that we have accessible now wasn’t available when I started practicing.

Matsuoka Roshi’s emphasis was just on our sitting meditation. He pointed out that this is where Buddha learned it. It came from Buddha’s meditation. It didn’t come from something his teachers taught him. Kind of “do thou likewise” is the main message. You can also do this. If you sit still enough long enough, you’ll have the same kind of insight that Buddha had.

Now this is hard for us to believe, right? That sitting still — something so stupid-simple (laughing) — could possibly have any kind of profound effect. But if you think about it, it’s very contrarian; it’s very anti- — what would you call it — counter-intuitive. It’s not natural for a mammal, a hunter-type, prey animal, to sit still for long periods of time, doing nothing. Right? We get very antsy. It’s only when you’re hunting for prey that you sit very still, (laughing) because you’re waiting for the prey to come along. Once they come along, you pounce on them. (laughter)

So this sitting still leads to what is called, in Buddhism, Samadhi. You may have heard this term Samadhi, means balanced state, or stillness, centered state. A cat, dog, chicken, cow, you know, trees, everything is in Samadhi. A cat is in “cat-Samadhi,” but when a mouse comes by, suddenly, it’s the Samadhi of action. Right? They’re after the mouse.

So it’s a deceptive thing, because it looks very still, when we sit. Matsuoka Roshi captured this deceptive quality of it when he said, “It looks like a mountain, but actually it’s a volcano.” If you think about a volcano, what’s happening in a volcano, is a caldera is building. A caldera is a sort of bulging of magma, coming up to the surface. It’s not strong enough yet to burst through, but it’s creating this mound of strength.

We kind of feel this in our stomach, we feel power, it’s called hara in Japanese, “stomach power.” We feel a kind of strength building there. In the martial arts it’s called the ki, in Japanese, or chi in Chinese. So, eventually, like a volcano, it comes through. Something happens, something transformative occurs.

So this is the great secret in Zen, that just sitting still enough, long enough, is the secret. You will undergo some sort of insight; some sort of transformation of your perception, your conception, your ideas. Even your seeing, your hearing, smelling, tasting and touching as we say in the Sutra. In emptiness, they change. Given emptiness, given Shunyatta, or what is called the “true condition of things,” which is a dynamic reality. Everything is changing.

Buddhism teaches that our mind (citta) imposes a false stillness on reality. We have to know if something is charging us; we have to know if something is running away from us; we have to know if something is sitting still. Survival.

But when we sit in zazen, we don’t need to know that anymore. The discriminating mind, the thinking mind, sitting facing a blank wall, is not very useful. (laughing) Right? We call it themonkey mind. It’s like a monkey jumping from limb to limb of a tree, it kind of goes berserk, if you don’t give it anything to do, anything to think about.

So you young ladies who came for the first time today, you may have found suddenly, “Aaaah, I’m going crazy!” (laughter) That’s the monkey mind. We go through our daily life, sort of postponing everything, mentally. Right? “I’ll get around to that.” Right now I’m busy; I’m driving, going shopping, or going to go to the movie, or something. And so this stuff accumulates. Unknown to us, it’s accumulating all the time, in our life. When we sit down and face a blank wall, and give our mind nothing to do, it’s all going to come out — like a volcano. Right? It’s all going to come bubbling up, and it’s going to be all this nonsense and noise, that’s been building up in there, for ever, like a mind-dump. And there it is, and it’s just chaotic and it’s crazy, and it’s not very flattering to ourselves, you might say. (laughter)

But gradually it subsides, eventually the mind settles down and becomes calm. Like a kitten or a puppy-dog, the monkey mind has its limits. It’s looking for something interesting and exciting all the time. But it will eventually run its tether out, get tired, lie down, take a nap. When that happens, we’re still awake. (laughing)

So-called Bodhi mind or “wisdom mind” comes to the fore. You might think of it as intuition, intuitive mind. That mind you use when you are doing art, when you are doing dance, when you are doing music; where it is not so much a thinking process as it is a gut-feel process.

So that kind of mind comes to the fore, in Zen. And eventually becomes more our normal state of mind, our “new normal.” We’re more intuitive. We are less analyzing and thinking. We are less worrying. Less planning. Right? Less critical of everything. More accepting.

This is the sort of transformation. It’s a balance of the two. You can think of this thinking mind, that we are trained to value — through our education — we get the good grades, get the good jobs, right? We compete. We figure out how to not lose what little bit of money we have (laughing) or how to save money, how to invest, and so forth. That’s all very important, and it helps us in our survival. But again, it’s useless when we are sitting facing a wall. We’re sort of surrendering (in zazen) and giving up (attachments, opinions, etc.); so that’s not very useful.

This sort of bodhi-mind, or wisdom mind, background mind… This is foreground mind, you might say (gesturing rapidly with right hand) — very frenetic, very high-frequency stuff, that we are used to doing with driving; and, you know, talking; and texting, at the same time we are driving (laughter); that’s all over here. Over here is sort of this big wave mind in the background (gesturing gently with left hand). It’s sort of the reason behind the reasons we are here today.

(Shout out to Baker Roshi for foreground-background mind.)

All the reasons we can come up with are over here (right hand). They are all these: Well, I’d like to be calmer. (laughing) I’ve heard Zen is a good thing. I’ve read something about Zen. And so forth.

But Buddhism looks at it as that there is a big wave going on behind (left hand), and these small waves are complimentary (right hand) and in synch with the big wave; you know, they synch up. But the big wave (left hand) is the real reason you are here, your life reason, or you might say the deeper philosophical reasons we are here today. We are on the Path, you know, we are seeking something that is missing in our life.

So zazen allows us to slow down, to, basically, a complete stop. Once we have been sitting still enough and long enough, and the breathing, and the sitting posture, and the attention all come together in a unified way, we sort of come to a complete stop. And it’s very important, because none of us know how to stop anymore. You know, we’re just go go go go go, driven driven driven all the time time time. Right?

Time becomes something measured, and we wonder, Oh, (looking at wristwatch) how long is he going to talk? (laughter) It’s already nine-fifteen. (laughing) We could be having breakfast! (laughter) Time becomes something you measure. It becomes something you can lose. It becomes something you can gain. It becomes something you can save. Right? It’s acommodity.

But when we sit in zazen we sink into real time. We re-enter real time, which you may remember from when you were a child, you know. Time was different for you (as a child).

Daisetz Suzuki said that the invention of measured time was a wonderful thing, because it allowed us to develop agriculture, you know, linear cause and effect. It allowed us to develop the industrial revolution. You know, time and motion studies, efficiency. And, you know, the reason we have such a rich economy (hoots and laughter); (laughing) when I say rich I meanconsumptive; when we have such a high level of consumption; the only reason — it’s all based on measured time. It all devolves to that fundamental concept.

If we didn’t have measured time, we couldn’t even talk to somebody on the West coast. They would be in a totally different time. You know, we have daylight savings time, we have time zones; it’s all like we are trying to control it very tightly, because that’s the way commerce works. Our school season is still based on farming, you know, farm seasons. It doesn’t make any sense at all. So it’s very much out of synch. We’ve gone so far over on the side of measured time, that, as Daisetz Suzuki said, while it was a wonderful invention, it was a great spiritual tragedy, because people took it to be the way time really is.

But when we practice zazen, somebody said, the barriers of time and space fall away. We enter into real time. And because, according to Einstein, space and time cannot be separated, we enter into real space for the first time.

So, this is some of the magic of zazen. It’s not something you can readily appreciate, the first time you are exposed to it. It takes repetition. As I always like to remind people, repetition is far more important than the regularity (of zazen). Repetition is more important than duration, how long you sit. It’s more important than frequency, how often you sit. Repetition, just the fact that no matter what happens, you keep coming back to it (zazen). In some way or some form, at some time, you come back and sit again.

Matsuoka Roshi said, Don’t give up! With his Japanese accent, “Don’ geeb op!” “Don’ geeb op!” That was one of his main teachings.

So no matter how bad it gets, no matter how unhappy you are; no matter how badly your marriage is working out (laughing); no matter how, you know, how bad the job is, that you just lost, and so forth; you still can sit. And so no batter how bad things get, you always have something you can do. And it always works.

Now, why it works, how it works, that is a book-length type of conversation. Right? It works on physiological levels, it works on mental levels, it works on emotional levels, and so forth. So it’s very difficult to go into that kind of detail, in this kind of conversation.

What I would like to do is just recite again, the Zazenshin, which was Master Dogen’s. Master Dogen — there is a portrait of him on the window ledge there — he was in 13th Century Japan. We call him the founder of Soto Zen in Japan. Soto Zen actually started in China many hundreds of years earlier. Tozan and Sozan are the two historical teachers (in the 800s) in China. Sozan is the So, and Tozan the To, of Soto. To(zan) is the actual teacher. In the Asian languages, the last is first. We would say Toso, because Tozan was the teacher and Sozan the student. Soto (or Caodong) is the way the Japanese and Chinese say it.

So Dogen brought this form of practice to Japan from China about 1225. His teacher in china was from that lineage. And it emphasizes this so-called quiet illumination, through sitting upright. So Dogen’s stress, for his time — and for our time — is on this simple practice of sitting meditation as being the essence of the teaching. This poem is called Zazenshin; that meansAcupuncture Needle — you know, an acupuncture needle; anybody not know what acupuncture is? — for Zazen. An acupuncture needle is very sharp, and goes right to the nerve. Hits the nerve.

So I am going to recite it. Last time, I recited it, and I think you just listened. This time I would like to ask you to engage in an oral tradition, where I say the line and you say it as soon as you hear me say it. You don’t wait; it’s not call-response. You say it as soon as you hear me say it, and see if you can keep up. You don’t have time to think, that way.

So Zazenshin: Acupuncture Needle for Zazen. I’ll repeat the first line twice, and some of these lines repeat, anyway. I’ll repeat the first line twice, so that you can catch up. It’s a form of hear-say; as soon as you hear it, try to say it. You don’t have to say it loud, but just try to say it, and try to hear and say what I am saying. This is the way the teachings were handed down the first four hundred years or so. They weren’t written down anywhere. You couldn’t go read the book. You had to go listen. And you had to chant, along with the people, if you were going to learn these (teachings). So I think you’ll find it an interesting exercise (based on Shohaku Okumura trans.):

The essential function of buddhas
and the functioning essence of ancestors
actualized within non-thinking
manifested within non-interacting

Actualized within non-thinking
actualization is by nature intimate
manifested within non-interacting
manifestation is by nature intimate

The actualization by nature intimate
never has defilement
manifestation by nature verification
never has distinction between absolute and relative

The intimacy without defilement
is dropping off without relying on anything
Verification beyond distinction between absolute and relative
is making effort without aiming at it

The water is clear to the earth
a fish is swimming like a fish
The sky is vast and extends to the heavens
a bird is flying like a bird

Did I say a fish is flying like a fish? Swimming, I hope. Do you want to do it again? (Yes) It’s a little fast, it’s very dense. You notice each four-line stanza, the next one takes the last two lines of that stanza, and opens it up a little more, and opens up a little more, and so forth. So it is kind of an unfolding form, of Chinese poetry. So, once more, Zazenshin:

(After recitation): What stood out for you there? What would you like to ask about?

The thing that immediately came to mind, being so used to call-and-response in everything. When I was a Christian it was call-and-response; when I was in the army, it was call-and-response. You know, so, repeating this, I was surprised how much I was keeping up. It was something I had never heard before, and I was still within a second or two of your recitation. I mean I wasn’t actually forming the words with my mouth, but my mind was following. And that was really surprising.

Matsuoka Roshi said the chanting is the meaning of the chanting, not the meaning of the words. If we did this chant, the same verse again and again and again — we did it every day, say; we lived in a monastery — it wouldn’t be long before we would all be saying it together. If I forgot a line, you would remember. Or if you were doing it by yourself you would remember the whole thing.

So you can see that this is a different way of learning. A different way of using the brain. and using language as sound, rather than having everything written down.

We lost a lot when we got the printed word. Because we lost this ability to actually listen. And to hear. And to assimilate, through hearing. You know, now we say, Well I can always read the book. And most people who are going around speaking have written a book. In fact, it is hard to get a speaking engagement unless you’ve written a book. (laughter) That you’re going to talk about, that the audience can go read! (laughing)

Why is the word acupuncture in the title?

Because it’s that needle that goes right to the center of zazen.

What is that needle?

You are that needle! (laughing) You are needling me. (laughter) Where is my kyosaku (stick)? I need the long one… For those of you who don’t know, we don’t hit you with this. You have to ask. And he’s asking.

He’s asking! (laughter)

So, anyone else? What did you hear, the newcomers? What stood out for you?

Well, the end. Just like the “fish, swimming like a fish.” It doesn’t matter if the water is calm or not; the fish is still swimming.

How about you?

Oh, just the fact of non-thinking. I don’t know; that just caught my attention, actually.

Actualized within non-thinkng. It refers to, in Fukanzazengi, which is another, the first tract that Dogen wrote down, when he was only 25 years old, maybe 26. When he came back from China, he had students already, and they wanted him to write something they could read when he was not around. Fukanzazengi means Universal Principles of Seated Meditation, or Promotion for Zazen, that kind of thing. And he actually refers to an incident there, these koans — you heard about koans? A koan is (clapping hands), You know the sound of two hands clapping. (holding up one hand) What is the sound of one hand?

It’s an illogical riddle that is meant to cast something into your mind that you can’t solve with the monkey mind. You know, you can’t analyze it or figure it out. So you have to… penetrate it, or go beyond it. Go beyond thinking, or go beyond reason or logic, in order to get it. If you answer that question, what is the sound of one hand? And the teacher accepts your answer, they say the teacher may then say, how big is that sound? (laughter) So there’s always deeper, deeper, deeper, right?

So he quotes this incident where a teacher is sitting there in zazen, and his student comes along, and says — and this is unbelievable that you would have your teacher sitting there in zazen, and you would say something to him, you would bother him (laughter) — What are you thinking, sitting there in that mountain-still state? You know, like a mountain. And he said, I am thinking not-thinking. This is all translated, of course, from Chinese. And he said, How can you think not-thinking? And the teacher said, It is not thinking.

Well, Dogen said, this is non-thinking. When we’re sitting, we may think, or we may not think. There are periods of time when thinking stops, and you’re just not thinking anything in particular — ding-dong, you know. And then as soon as you maybe recognize, Well hey, I haven’t been thinking for a while, suddenly you’re thinking. (laughter)

But the point is, it doesn’t matter whether we’re thinking or not. That’s not what we’re doing. It doesn’t have any real influence or effect on what we’re doing. Now in school and when we are in projects, some of our thoughts are very important.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/zen-monkey-business-part-1/feed/0Climbing Zen Mountain IIIhttp://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain-iii/
http://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain-iii/#commentsTue, 05 Jul 2011 11:15:53 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40909This article will complete the series of three essays on the Three Treasures, or jewels, of Buddhism, in their relationship to Zen practice. The first took up the idea and function of community in Zen — Sangha, the harmonious community. Next we looked at Dharma, the compassionate teaching. Finally, we will consider the jewel of Buddha, the original ...

]]>This article will complete the series of three essays on the Three Treasures, or jewels, of Buddhism, in their relationship to Zen practice. The first took up the idea and function of community in Zen — Sangha, the harmonious community. Next we looked at Dharma, the compassionate teaching. Finally, we will consider the jewel of Buddha, the original nature. We approach these traditional subjects from a somewhat unusual perspective, regarding them as different forms, or stages, of training, framed around the familiar metaphor of climbing a mountain (see illustration).

The inseparability of the three is a theme that we have seen running throughout, with the necessary balance to be struck in daily practice. But Soto Zen emphasizes a definite bias in favor of “buddha practice” —peak experience on the cushion — first and foremost.

TREASURING BUDDHA

In the last segment we discussed what is meant by Dharma in Zen Buddhism. I confessed that, as with Sangha, I really don’t understand it. In Zen, we return to the cushion again and again to examine dharma, and when we leave the cushion, we re-enter sangha. Zen meditation, again, is of primary importance, being the only way to truly understand dharma, or to embrace sangha wholeheartedly.

If we were to title this section “Treasuring the Buddha,” we would be pointing to the historical Buddha Shakyamuni. But here we are simply referring to the buddha nature that is innate in all sentient beings, and which is the spiritual birthright of human beings. Birth as a human is considered the essential pivot-point, the requirement for awakening. Being thus, it is the responsibility of all human beings to be such a person. Sitting upright in zazen, or Samadhi, is the self-fulfilling method through which this transformation is most likely to occur, though it is impossible to establish a cause-effect relationship.

Buddha practice is visualized as the peak of Zen Mountain (see illustration). At the top of the mountain the air is rarefied; it is freezing cold. Frozen ice and snow make the walking treacherous, and the sky all around is pitch black, revealing the stars in all their adamantine sharpness and majestic indifference. One’s life is in immediate and intimate danger. A storm can arise at any moment and blow one off the mountain, on which one has only the most tenuous grip. Now is the time to step forward into the infinite abyss.

Returning to Matsuoka Roshi’s Dhyanayana; A Practical Guide Among The Ways Of Zen
from Mokurai, a collection of his talks from the 1970s and 1980s, we find more on zazen:

The Zen sects differ as to the purpose of zazen in that Rinzai views zazen as a means to enlightenment; whereas Soto views zazen as the expression of enlightenment. Nonetheless, the Rinzai, Obaku and Soto sects all agree on the prime importance of zazen.

So while there may be different styles amongst the sects of Zen, they come together around the central importance of upright seated meditation. In Soto Zen, it realizes its simplest application, in that it is not accompanied by study or koans or other verbal teachings from the history of Zen. It is considered complete, the Buddha’s seal. From Master Dogen’s effusive testimony regarding the experience and meaning of zazen, Self-fulfilling Samadhi (Jijuyu Zammai), we hear more testimony to this simple method:

Now all ancestors and all buddhas who uphold buddhadharma have made
it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright practicing in the midst of self-fulfilling samadhi
Those who attained enlightenment in India and China followed this way
It was done so because teachers and disciples personally transmitted this
excellent method as the essence of the teaching
In the authentic tradition of our teaching it is said that this directly
transmitted straightforward buddhadharma is the unsurpassable of the unsurpassable

Both Master Dogen and Matsuoka Roshi bother to make the point that it is necessary but not sufficient to do zazen; that one also needs to practice under the supervision of a “true teacher” or “master”; that in fact the two seem an indispensable and complementary pair. FromDhyanayana:

Secondly, all the Zen sects agree that it is important to study with an authentic teacher or Zen master. It is through a living interchange between master and disciple that a disciple comes to a mastery of Zen in his or her own right. This interchange, called heart to heart transmission, whether long or short in time duration, is only effective if the Zen student has prepared him or herself adequately through the assiduous practice of zazen.

And from Jijuyu Zammai:

From the first time you meet a master without engaging in incense offering bowing chanting Buddha’s name repentance or reading scriptures you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind

It is implied that any true teacher or master will get out of the way of your practice. Specifically, by not distracting you from your practice of zazen with too much emphasis on ritualized sangha forms — incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha’s name, repentance; and/or dharma study — reading scriptures. Or, for that matter, good works, administration, attachment to robes, socialization, making Zen palatable, or any number of other sidetracks and blind alleys. Matsuoka Roshi goes on to nail the personal dimension of practice, which trumps all the others, and ultimately puts them in perspective:

Bodhidharma, the twenty-eighth successor to Gautama Buddha, and the first Chinese patriarch, describes the characteristics of Zen study as:

A special transmission outside the sutras
No dependence on words or learning
Direct pointing to the mind of man
Seeing your real nature and living enlightenment

Master Dogen nails it more poetically, but with the same seminal and singular focus:

When even for a moment you express the Buddha’s seal in the three
actions by sitting upright in samadhi the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha’s seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment

But — and with Master Dogen, as well as Sensei, there is always a but — it all depends on the individual’s diligence, endurance, and unwillingness to give up or settle for anything less than complete spiritual satisfaction. Sensei goes on to illustrate a syndrome that is seemingly a culturally-imbedded and stubborn trait, not exclusively of the Western mindset, but definitely exacerbated by memes such as the cult of the individual:

From a statistical point of view, by far the largest group of Zen practitioners are those who begin the practice of Zen, and then because of a lack of conviction, initial difficulties or a lack of self discipline, discontinue their practice. Most of the Zen Temples in the United States are populated by this latter group. And really, the Zen sanghas of historic and modern India, China, Japan, Korea and Viet Nam are, and were, probably very similar. It is very easy to see when observing this group of Zen practitioners who start, then stop, that there is no LIVING enlightenment in them. Surely, some of these people, depending upon their abilities, their consistency, their intensity and their duration of practice have differing degrees of insight into various parts of their lives; and this is a good, and important, effect.

This was true as of this writing, in 1985, and sadly, it seems even more so today. It is astonishing that Zen students who spend a few years, five or six at the most, in what appears to be diligent and dedicated practice, suddenly feel that they have gotten all they can get out of it, or that they are now qualified to go on their own and lead others, or even to instruct or correct their teacher.

During this time, their practice has amounted to part-time, not even half-time, as most of their time is devoted to family, friends, work, and other activities embraced as meaningful and normal in our consumption-driven society. Zen is for everyone, and lay practice is the future of Zen, but if it is Americanized to the same degree as the 24-7 news cycle, the echo chamber of talking points, and the bumper-sticker mentality that passes for insight these days, it has no real future. In a fifteen-trillion economy whose stability depends upon 70% consumption, it is clear that most practitioners are going to be caught up in the ever-accelerating cycle, and will come to regard Zen as just another commodity. If they do not find immediate satisfaction in their own practice, or their teacher, why, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. For another teacher, or another practice more accommodating to their perceived needs.

Sensei addresses this lamentable situation with the resignation garnered from experience:

Zen, however, does not radiate through them body, mind, and moment. They do not continually remember their own original nature, and act freely out of it and through it. That is a pity. I suppose that it is also the law of averages. Like anything effective on planet earth, Zen teachers from Shakyamuni Buddha to today have had to adapt the teaching as pointed at by Bodhidharma to the culture, language and status of those students of the Zen way that they seek to lead. They have also had to adapt their teaching to the level of gifts and to the level of intensity of their Zen disciples.

The real tragedy here is that these “come-and-go” or “wishy-washy” types, as Sensei would call them, are missing out on the opportunity to recover, or discover, their sacred birthright. As Jesus was said to have said when told of those who had rejected his teaching, “Their reward is with them.” Or as Shakyamuni remarked when told that some had come to debate at his last sermon (the Lotus Sutra), “They are free to go.” We have adopted, as our motto, Sokei-an’s expression: “Those who come here are welcomed; those who leave are not pursued.” This expresses the pragmatic balance to be struck.

It is impossible to convey the meaning and significance of zazen practice under a true teacher such as Matsuoka Roshi, but Master Dogen’s final words in Jijuyu Zammai come as close as one is likely to find:

Thus in the past future and present of the limitless universe this zazen
carries on the Buddha’s teaching endlessly
Each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice equally wholeness
of realization
This is not only practice while sitting it is like a hammer striking
emptiness before and after its exquisite peal permeates everywhere
how can it be limited to this moment?
Hundreds of things all manifest original practice from the original face
it is impossible to measure
Know that even if all buddhas of the ten directions as innumerable as the
sands of the Ganges exert their strength and with the buddhas’ wisdom try to measure the merit of one person’s zazen they will not be able to fully comprehend it

It is my fervent hope that all will climb to this inconceivable peak of Zen Mountain. And after — but only after, no premature proselytizing here — that they might descend once again into the marketplace, with benevolence-bestowing hands.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain-iii/feed/0Climbing Zen Mountain IIhttp://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain-ii/
http://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain-ii/#commentsSun, 03 Jul 2011 11:11:22 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40903This article is the second in a series of examinations of the Three Treasures of Buddhism, in their relationship to Zen practice. The first took up the idea and function of community in Zen — Sangha, the harmonious community. This month we will look at Dharma, the compassionate teaching. Finally, we will consider the jewel ...

]]>This article is the second in a series of examinations of the Three Treasures of Buddhism, in their relationship to Zen practice. The first took up the idea and function of community in Zen — Sangha, the harmonious community. This month we will look at Dharma, the compassionate teaching. Finally, we will consider the jewel of Buddha, the original nature. We will approach these traditional subjects from a somewhat unusual perspective, regarding them as different forms, or stages, of training, framed around the familiar metaphor of climbing a mountain (see illustration). Quoting from myself:

Dharma as a stage or form of training can be likened to the slopes of Zen Mountain. When and if we persist through the tarpits, quicksand and briarpatches of sangha practice, we may emerge on the other side of the foothills to begin the ascent of the more arid slopes of Zen Mountain. Leaving behind the warm and friendly confines of interacting with our fellow-travelers, we proceed up the steep incline, one finger-hold and toe-hold at a time. We may occasionally rely on our teacher or dharma brother or sister to belay us with a rope so as to avoid falling when we inevitably lose our grip, but we are pretty much on our own. The slopes of dharma are not as cushioning and comforting as the embrace of the lowlands and foothills of sangha, but they are cleaner, cooler, less entangling.

The inseparability of the three is a theme running throughout, with the necessary balance to be struck in daily practice. But we will continue the bias toward Zen’s “buddha practice,” the peak of direct experience on the cushion — zazen — as first and foremost.

TREASURING THE DHARMA

Last month we explored the Buddhist ideal of Sangha in the context of the “only-don’t-know” mind of Zen. I confessed that I had come to the conclusion that I really don’t know what is going on the minds and hearts of others, particularly Zen students. When it comes to Dharma, I must provide a similar caveat. I really don’t know what it means. I don’t understand it. And that is the starting position of buddhadharma. Knowing that we don’t actually know.

Recently it occurred to me that a mere slip of the fast-finger syndrome, or a slight touch of dyslexia, is the only thing that stands between dharma and dhrama. The Sturm and Drang of drama may indeed be a meme of Zen practice in America today. People have become hyper-critical in a culture of constant conflict. College students these days grade their professors, guaranteeing conflict in the classroom. Conflict is exciting. People are conditioned to constantly seek excitement, entertainment, whether of melodrama, psychodrama — any drama will do. To fend off the suffocating anxiety of existence, the difficulty and boredom of daily life, including the tedium of simple Zen practice.

Dharma offers some relief from this situation. It points to the reality underlying the surface. Buddhadharma was the result of Buddha’s original estrangement, his disillusionment with the everyday concerns and engagements of his time, which were much less hyper than ours. The necessary balance to be found between zazen and practice in daily life applies to Dharma as much as to Sangha. As mentioned in the prior article, Dharma, technically, is the study of the spoken and written teachings.

But dharma does not exist in a vacuum, as a set of abstract teachings put down in words. The true meaning of dharma is not in the words. As with sangha, the deeper meaning of buddhadharma cannot be gotten from reading or discursive learning. Personal and direct insight is necessary to embrace the worldview that Buddhism values. The written record only points at the reality in front of your face. Buddha practice — Zen meditation — is of primary importance and efficacy, in “understanding” dharma as well as in embracing sangha. Buddha practice is found only at the peak of Zen Mountain.

Descending Zen Mountain is different from ascending. Both dharma and sangha look very different from the perspective of practice-experience on the cushion. Entering sangha from the outside world, it appears as a sanctuary, a group of like-minded individuals; dharma initially appears as a body of knowledge to be learned. Re-entering sangha from the perspective of buddha practice, it appears as one’s own family; dharma as recorded is revealed as the poor shadow of a reality beyond words, beyond grasping.

The inseparability of dharma from buddha and sangha becomes crystal clear, as the foremost aspect of each tripart, but particularly of dharma. Again, the three-legged stool.

The most difficult dharma is often said to be that of marriage, considered by some the fundamental dyad of society. The dharma of married, or family, life is the most difficult to learn. This may be one reason why the practitioners of Zen were often celibate, living a monastic life that eschewed normal family entanglements. It is a kind of simplicity imposed from the outside. Finding the simplicity of family in the midst of it is a difficult trick to turn.

Let us turn to written words of our founding Zen master, Dogen Zenji, in Fukanzazengi:

You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and reflect on yourself

When you do so your body and mind will naturally fall away and your original Buddha-nature will appear

Here we find the dharma, in its sense of truth, expressed as instruction, or skillful means. Pursuing words and letters is not the same as reading. It is reading with the hope, which Master Dogen is implying is ultimately vain, that we will find the dharma, in its meaning of spiritual insight. Instead, the great genius of Zen encourages us to simply reflect upon oneself, which seems to be the surest way to become mired in mindless boredom. Withdrawing may be the key here. Whatever it is that you find boring about yourself, if youwithdraw from it, you may find that something else is in play. What is boring may be your misinterpretation of what you mean by your self. Master Dogen then goes on to remind us that there is no time to waste; this may take some time:

If you wish to realize the Buddha’s wisdom you should begin training immediately

From the Master’s Self-fulfilling Samadhi (Jijuyu Zanmai), we hear:

you will in zazen unmistakably drop off body and mind

cutting off the various defiled thoughts from the past

and realize the essential buddhadharma

So dropping off body and mind (shinjin datsuraku) is key to apprehending the dharma. What do you suppose that means? It cannot be simply ignoring the body and mind as an act of willpower, as Zen’s truth is experiential. Defiled thoughts here would include such concepts as attaining buddhadharma by changing one’s mind or viewpoint. Defilement means conventional, discriminating thinking, and does not refer to the content of the thought, as in vile or degrading. Defilement is what we reduce buddhadharma to when we think we can understand it with the intellect. Thoughts from the past would include all of those regarding dharma as a concept up until the moment of insight, when all such thinking is cut off in the moment of clarity beyond thought. The essential buddhadharma implies that whatever buddhadharma we thought we understood until that moment was not the essential truth.

Now all of this may imply to the dear reader that this writer is claiming profound insight not accessible to the hoi polloi, which is how much writing comes across these days. So let me fess up to my poor, or at least ordinary understanding of Dharma. It perfectly compliments the degree of my grasp of Sangha & Buddha.

If I see a member of the sangha practicing zazen diligently, and not getting bogged down in the interpersonal issues, real or imagined, with other Sangha members, then I don’t worry about them. If I see that they are not reading too much, not overly eager to discuss and display their grasp of buddhadharma, but are more interested in others’ understanding, then I don’t worry about them.

The technical definition of Dharma must be replaced with a simple one of truth. Truth transcending memes of the culture that hold that Truth is captured in scripture, sacred texts, commandments, rules, laws of the land, as well as philosophy, science, psychology, religion, the arts and so forth. Compared to these truths, which are based either on belief or confirming evidence, or a combination of the two, in Buddhism the ultimate truth is based on the identification of the self with the transformative experience of insight. Dharma, as truth, in Zen, is experiential. Which is what makes it accessible to all.

But the very experiential nature of this truth, with its reliance on first-person evidence, is what creates the mystique surrounding Buddhist awakening. As Matsuoka Roshi reminds us in the second volume of his collected talks, Mokurai: Dhyanayana, A Practical Guide Among The Ways Of Zen:

Zen first gained a popular foothold in the cultural life of the United States a half century after Soyen Shaku’s visit. Among some of the intellectuals of that time, among the circle of beat poets and authors, Zen became something of a philosophical fancy. It was portrayed in jack Kerouac’s book, On The Road, as a philosophical motif in the dialogue of a group of itinerants touring across America against a backdrop of their personal drama and social commentary. For the beat generation of the ‘fifties Zen was used as nothing more than a justification for new or non conventional behavior. This was called “Beat Zen.” It was never really a school of Zen as are Rinzai and Soto, which are both founded in a tradition of serious practice. Nonetheless, “Beat Zen” did much to focus popular and literary attention toward Zen, just as the writings of Dr. Daisetsu Suzuki, a disciple of Soyen Shaku Roshi, did much to focus academic attention toward Zen. And so, from the popular discussion of Zen without direct experience that ensued, Americans created a mystique around Zen from all they had heard.

Another early influence that had a distorting effect was that of Alan Watts, who pointed out that Zen does not represent a religion, in the Western sense of being based on belief; and that it is not a philosophy, exactly, but more a psychotherapy. This, I believe, colored the perception and conception of Zen in the Western mind, and with the other influences above placed Zen in a New Age niche from which it is still struggling to extricate itself.

One persistent meme derived from these referents is an informational definition of the function of Dharma — as content expressible in words. This perception feeds into the same “birds of a feather/fun to get together” — talk about the dharma, debate, and share each other’s expertise and go home feeling a little bit more enlightened — mentioned previously in the context of the kaffeklatsch sangha.

This characterization of Dharma as something that can be studied also lends to competition, one-upsmanship, and other entertainments of the monkey mind. It suggests, in egalitarian fashion, that all opinions are equal, but the more informed can hold sway with studied regurgitation of facts. It also implies the notion that, Why have a teacher when I can study all that has been written about buddhadharma?

Of course, one cannot in one lifetime possibly read all that has been written over 2000 years, much of which is not yet translated into English. Nowadays one could hardly read what is available in English. Most of which will turn out to be “publish-or-perish” commentaries by authors of dubious direct experience, and a growing body of literature about Buddhism or Zen, outside the realm of actual practice esperience. Not to put too fine a point on it, but much of the literature from various professions that have co-opted Zen seems to be driven by less than altruistic motives, let alone Buddhism’s Precept to not spare the dharma assets.

Buddhadharma is not offered up for debate and speculation, however interesting and elevating. It is not intended to be intellectually parsed to support the careers of careerists in the professing profession. Nor is it meant to support the offerings of the helping professions in counseling, life coaching, psychology and psychiatry.

Buddhadharma exists for one purpose only and that is to point at the truth (dharma) that Buddha and the Ancestors experienced, and transmitted to the next generation. For the first four centuries or so it wasn’t even written down, one suspects to prevent it from the predations of writers, who even then could not resist tinkering with it to their own ends.

Dharma is not merely a cohesive, internally-consistent philosophy to be compared and contrasted with other philosophies as just another entrée on that already-overloaded groaning board. It is not one in a quiver of many arrows to be bent to the purposes of those out to save the world, individual souls, or other people’s sanity. It may be argued that it is intended to save one’s sanity, but that term would have to be relieved of its social baggage to accord with what might be considered sane in Zen.

Although in marketing terms, Soto Zen has to represent one of the most venerable and respected brands in history, it is not designed for its proponents to profit from the enterprise, nor to bask in the glow of its aura while selling delusion. This is the easiest claim to bring against a practitioner, accusations of greed for fame and profit, but any thinking person who takes a cold and calculating look at the market for Zen would quickly seek greener pastures elsewhere. Dharma does not do avarice.

Dharma challenges conventional mores and standards as to what constitutes learning, or knowledge — what is worth knowing and what simply constitutes a mind full of useless information. This culture’s worship of the latter, and the concomitant ability to instantly recall reams of trivia, is demonstrated by the persistent poularity of game shows purporting to reward the intelligence of the winners.

But true intelligence is not the accumulation, storage and retrieval of witless tons of information. That is a warehousing operation, and efficiency is its alpha and omega. It is not at all necessary to understand information to regurgitate it on demand. The recent victory of a computer over two of Jeopardy’s champions drove this home with a vengeance. Those who have been envied, admired, feted — or in cases of the idiot savant, pitied — for their near-miraculous recall, can testify that total recall can be as much a curse as a blessing.

I once had a boss who claimed to have photographic memory (in a vain attempt to buttress his opinion of what had gone wrong with a project). I knew better from years of working with him, but my first reaction was, Oh that is too bad; I feel so sorry for you. Anyone who actually had total recall would be cursed to relive every petty and ridiculous memory that they have ever had since consciousness arose. In my case, most of it is not worth remembering.

When this attitude is applied to Zen Buddhism, it becomes a pathetic caricature of Zen. It is the height of irony that the only body of teaching that is intended to help divest, and disabuse ourselves of, culturally-conditioned, obsessive-compulsive approaches to learning, is turned into yet more grist for the data mill. In extreme manifestations of intellectual hubris, witnessed repeatedly in history, it becomes an overweening emphasis. Erudition is a brief slide away from pedantry — slavish attention to obscure facts or details, undue displays of learning. This is widely ridiculed, as missing the point entirely.

Zen Buddhism, with its direct approach to physical meditation, the non-separation of body-mind, is regarded as the development of true intelligence. Intelligence is typically defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills (New Oxford American Dictionary). Buckminster Fuller defined it as the ability to extract general principles from particular case experiences. In cultural evolution, it is driven by linguistic ability to transfer information to the next generation.

Intelligence in Zen would partake of all of these dimensions to a degree. But it begins with a more fundamental definition that separates truth, the fundamental object of intelligence, into two realms — the relative and absolute, or conventional and transcendent. It poses questions: What is our intelligence for? What is worth knowing and what is not? In fact, Zen’s starting point is, What is knowing itself?

The direct apprehension of buddhadharma begins with questioning what we think we know. It does not begin with a campaign to gain more knowledge, however arcane or high-minded, though that is the usual entry level for most people. The process that occurs naturally in Zen meditation is one of stripping away opinions, beliefs, theories, ideas, philosophies, and concepts that we have learned about reality, so that it becomes possible to have a direct experience of reality. This latter kind of knowledge would then be considered truth, as opposed to opinion. It is uncovered through a program of unlearning.

But Zen opposes the very idea that our direct experience, familiar to us in ordinary consciousness, penetrates to any level of insight that could be considered true. The very sense-data provided to the nervous system is regarded as biased and unreliable. When such information is processed by the brain for analysis, resulting in perception, it is even more skewed. And when unconscious mental formations come into play from past experience, it is further distorted. One can have unreasoning fear, for example, or “irrational exuberance,” for another, which has no connection with present reality. Yet it can overlay our perception, and condition our actions, with unintended consequences.

From the classical Buddhist canon — which most scholars and otherwise normal folks would regard as comprising the Dharma, the scriptures of Zen — we can find the First Sermon, which introduces the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path; the 12-fold Chain; the Six Paramitas; and so on. From the first Noble Truth that existence itself is of the nature of suffering, to the Precepts (shila) Paramita (perfection), we find that all are pointing at truth and taking action in the context of the truth. Zen’s Dharma is sometimes considered pessimistic, as it does not promise us a rose garden nor rebirth in paradise.

But Zen Buddhism promises something infinitely more useful: a method for our own salvation, and that of others. There is actually something to do in Zen, something that works in one’s daily life to mitigate the unnecessary suffering that we inflict upon ourselves and upon others. The teachings are all inter-connected in ways that can be seen as actionable. For example, the relationships between the Three Treasures or Jewels, and the Paramitas:

Buddhadharma is all about the interfaces between the teachings of Buddhism. For example, when we look at the Three Treasures in an overlapping Venn diagram, we can see that the overlap between Dharma and Sangha would indicate the application, and hopefully perfecting (paramita) of skillful means (upaya). Between Dharma and Buddha we would find contemplation (dhyana), perfecting of meditation to resolve the relation of our original nature to the compassionate teaching. Between Sangha and Buddha we may place the perfecting of Precepts (shila), as a way to maintain harmony in the community.

Likewise, we can relate the tripartite division of the Eightfold Path to the Three Treasures: right conduct (speech, action and livelihood) being the outer mark of the harmonious Sangha; Right Wisdom (view and thought) being the manifestation of true Dharma; and right discipline (effort, mindfulness, meditation) the inner workings of Buddha.

So it is necessary that when we do come together, we focus on the central challenge of life, that of resolving the basic dilemma of existence through direct experience. Again, the rewards of engaging in philosophical speculation, reading and sharing thoughts on the latest popular book on the best-selling list, snappy repartee and mutual admiration, cannot be gainsaid. But the true Dharma gets lost in the excitement. Dharma is not in the words, and no matter how relentlessly the texts are massaged, the cool water of the Dharma is not going to be wrung out of them, like so many used washcloths.

Zen is nourishing, like rice. It is refreshing, like water. What Zen offers the whole ocean in one gulp. Stop complaining about your thirst, and begin drinking. If hungry, eat Zen.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain-ii/feed/0Climbing Zen Mountainhttp://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain/
http://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain/#commentsFri, 01 Jul 2011 11:09:28 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=40900This article will introduce a series of three examinations of the Three Treasures, or jewels, of Buddhism, in their relationship to Zen practice. The first will take up the idea and function of community in Zen — Sangha, the harmonious community. Next month we will look at Dharma, the compassionate teaching. Finally, we will consider the jewel ...

]]>This article will introduce a series of three examinations of the Three Treasures, or jewels, of Buddhism, in their relationship to Zen practice. The first will take up the idea and function of community in Zen — Sangha, the harmonious community. Next month we will look at Dharma, the compassionate teaching. Finally, we will consider the jewel of Buddha, the original nature. We will approach these traditional subjects from a somewhat unusual perspective, regarding them as different forms, or stages, of training, framed around the familiar metaphor of climbing a mountain (click to enlarge illustration and/or download pdf version).

The inseparability of the three is a theme that we will see running throughout, with the necessary balance to be struck in daily practice, much like Philip Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen, the 3-legged stool metaphor. But we will emphasize a definite bias toward Zen’s “buddha” practice, the peak of direct experience on the cushion — zazen — as first and foremost in importance and efficacy. As the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers would say, Zazen will get you through times of no sangha or dharma a lot better than sangha or dharma will get you through times of no zazen.

TREASURING THE SANGHA

Last month we explored the “only-don’t-know” mind of Zen — not-knowing as an approach to Buddhist wisdom. I confessed that I had come to the conclusion that, when I think I really know what is going on the minds and hearts of others, particularly students and members of the sangha, I really don’t know. I’m not a mind-reader. Nor the Shadow.

In his first written tract after returning to Japan from China at the tender age of 25 or so, Master Dogen recorded basic instructions and some philosophical underpinnings of zazen for his students to use as reference, at their request. One of the lines says something about “forsaking all delusive relationships, setting everything aside” in beginning meditation. The part about setting everything aside is difficult enough, but I have to really question how one would know whether or not a relationship is delusive, and should be forsaken; or whether it is not. Is there any relationship that is not, in some way, delusive? I digress.

This time, I would like to share with you some insights, admittedly with a pro-teacher bias, regarding sangha and students, particularly American or Western students of Zen. I will presume to speak in the generalized context of all Zen teachers and students for sake of simplicity, and to depersonalize any suggestions made. But these are my opinions alone, and do not claim to represent other teachers you may have encountered, or those you may encounter in future. Please bear with a long bit of introduction and history.

I came to Atlanta in 1970, with the practice robe Matsuoka Roshi gave me and one zafu under my arm. The same year, Matsuoka Roshi moved to Long Beach and established the Temple there, with Kongo Roshi taking over the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, established in the 1950s. I “kept my light under a bushel” for a few years, while re-establishing my life, having left behind the world of academia, and my first marriage, in Chicago. Later, once I had a suitable place to live, my children rejoined me, and my ex-wife moved to Atlanta to be near them. I had embarked upon a new career in the world of consumer research and design for new product development, meeting many new people, and cultivating a new community of friends, as well a new marriage.

In 1974, I first began offering classes in Zen meditation at the Cliff Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, schlepping two oversize trash bags full of zafus into the building every week. In the years since, I offered regular public meditation in our home (not a good idea), and in various storefronts and other locations, managing to achieve some consistency of practice, with very little disruption in continuity. And, incidentally, with no income from Zen (really not a good idea, as it turns out).

Eventually, in 1977, we had established a large and committed enough group to incorporate the Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) as a 501c3 under the state charter of Georgia. Later, in the early 1980s, we found a space in Little Five Points that we could afford to rent. Others began contributing financially to the cost of overhead (about $500 per month in those days) and I, as the registered agent of the corporation, continued to match the largest donor each year (regulations of the IRS prohibit the agent from being the largest donor for obvious reasons).

During the 1980s, more attendees became regular members, and with very little formal structure, excepting bylaws and a nascent board of directors, the local sangha grew. The Disciple group also grew as Matsuoka Roshi gave me permission and the requisite ceremonies and certificates of his formal recognition to take on my own students. Toward the end of the 1990s, we had a rather full schedule, and had developed a few affiliate groups; I was asked by seniors to become full-time. This meant I had to find a way to retire from my research and design business, stop pursuing national accounts, and needed supplemental income from the sangha (my finances were insufficient to retire).

Over the years, literally thousands of individuals have come and gone, often crediting us, ASZC, with their first real exposure to genuine Zen practice of any formal sort. Many have stayed in touch, though they have scattered to the four corners of the globe (one of my favorite, if inaccurate, expressions). Several Disciples moved on in life, of course, and a few established substantial sitting groups and Zen centers where they landed. One left as early as 1980 and, returning to Nova Scotia, established our affiliate there. He will return for his term as Shuso (Head Monk) in residence during Ango (Practice Period) this month. Over thirty years later, he is taking the next step in fromal prerequisites for transmission as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest. Teaching us all, by his great example, the practice of patience and humility. He has taken up the life-long view of Zen.

Others have left under less cheerful circumstances, but such is life. Not everyone is cut out to practice Zen, whether in an informal or formal setting. We are accustomed to shopping around these days for everything from a new pair of flip-flops to a husband or wife. There’s an app for that.

I find it clarifying to think in terms of the Three Treasures, when attempting to analyze or understand behavior of Zen students. Of course, balance is needed between the three, as the legs of Zen stability. Sangha is community, with all that that implies about the social dimensions of Dharma (e.g. Precepts and Paramitas), with regards to sangha members, including one’s teachers. Dharma, technically, is the study of the spoken and written teachings. Buddha is the direct experience of Dharma, on or off the cushion.

Finding balance in practice between these three is a matter of personal discernment, adapting to what is required by one’s specific sangha and place of practice. We do not practice Zen with the sangha we choose; we practice Zen with the sangha we have. Including, like it or not, the teacher’s personality, training, and predilections. Eventually, the three are seen as facets of one gem. Buddha = dharma = sangha = buddha.

In a recent conversation with one of my teachers, she reminded me that in this country, we have cultural “models” — you may prefer memes, a term currently in vogue. These in some measure affect individual attitudes, perceptions and preconceptions regarding Zen. One powerful influence she suggested is the Protestant church, with its emphasis on community in the sense of fellowship. Of course, there is also the underlying identity of the select, whose souls are saved, versus those going to hell, a stubborn meme. Gradually it is giving way to a more ecumenical embrace of other salvation religions, I am told. Another, the Religious Society of Friends, aka Quakers, who allow as how individuals can directly experience Christ, or God. Their practice of publicly sitting in silence, is similar to meditation, but punctuated by the occasional outspoken revelation.

One persistent meme derived from these referents is a social definition of the function of community, with positive connotations of friendship (reinforced by sanctity, as the body of Christ). Another is the egalitarian ideal of the (Quaker) congregation, largely eschewing authoritarian leadership. The same may be said of Unitarianism, which seems to favor consensus of the many over authority of any one, including even that of Christ.

Some may question why Zen Buddhists would bother to gather as a group at all. Why not just retire to a cave and contemplate the buddhadharma? The answers are found in the cultural context. We are social beings, comfortable flocking together with birds of similar feather. The concept of similarity usually reflects the causes and conditions of one’s birth: race; ethnicity; language; physical or sensory impairment; along with stereotypical traits: age group (talkin’ ’bout my generation); education; physical fitness and body type; attractiveness; even or especially relative financial success. All understandable, self-selecting filters, for the parameters of a community in which one can feel a sense of belonging. Opposites repel. But that which brings us together separates us from others.

The Buddhist community, sangha, is not intended to reinforce similarities. Its members are not necessarily like-minded. The Order was, from its beginning in India, designed to cross all lines of the cultural community, in those days codified into a rigid caste system. All were welcome to join the sangha, from any level of society, regardless of ability to pay, or to perform. It was, eventually, as inclusive as practicable, not exclusive.

It also challenged traditional memes — cultural mores and standards — as to what constitutes true home and family; who are loved ones, and who the outcasts, if any. It taught compassion and forbearance, especially with the failings of others. Occasionally, members had to be excluded, mainly for the same reasons some are today — fomenting disharmony in the sangha. Buddha’s own cousin, Devadatta is known to have betrayed, and attempted to assassinate, him. Huineng, Dogen, and others were vilified by factions.

Today, the Zen Buddhist community is still something of an anomaly, in the context of what is conventionally meant by community. Sangha is much like an amoeba, constantly shape-shifting. It is not limited to the local yokels. Another metaphor: Zen practitioners are like a guerilla warfare squad, coming together from time to time to meditate; then dispersing to confront the battles of everyday life as undercover resistance fighters.

So it is crucially important that when we do come together, we focus on the central challenge of life, that of resolving the basic dilemma of existence. Our method, the alpha and omega of Buddhist praxis, is to probe this mystery on the cushion. When we find that we are gathering for other reasons, and driven by other needs, however cherished, it is no longer a Zen Buddhist sangha. It may be a community, and it may be harmonious, but it exists for other purposes. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

People often come looking to Zen centers for the creature comforts of keeping company with like-minded fellow travelers. Some may value the rewards of engaging in philosophical speculation through reading great books, especially the classics of Zen. But other organizations are quite capable of providing fellowship, bonhomie, networking opportunities, programs for singles, parents, children, and intellectual enrichment. There is certainly nothing wrong with a sangha meeting some of these peripheral needs.

But no other institution is as competent and capable of providing the conducive environment, and robust program for the direct learning (or unlearning) process that is uniquely represented by zazen, or shikantaza. What a Zen sangha offers is very simple. But it is very difficult for people to sustain. It is easy to develop expectations, become disillusioned or disappointed, and quit too soon, to go wandering in other pastures.

Sangha provides psychological and social support to its members over the long term. It helps the individual sustain their effort long enough to come to personal insight, as well as to transcend any overweening dependency on sangha as such. Let us continue to treasure the Sangha, in harmony with Dharma and Buddha. We do so in support of our mission of propagating genuine Soto Zen, through the buddha-seal — the meditation of Master Dogen, and of Shakyamuni Buddha.

This is the mission that we in the lineages of Matsuoka Roshi, Uchiyama Roshi, and Suzuki Roshi have inherited. We cannot allow ourselves, or others in our sangha, to become distracted by other missions, however appealing and satisfying to our cultural demands, and personal self- image.

Zen is bland, like rice. It is tasteless, like water. What Zen offers is not simply another entrée on the spiritual smorgasbord. If it were, it wouldn’t have lasted for 2500 years.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/climbing-zen-mountain/feed/0Only Don’t Knowhttp://sweepingzen.com/only-dont-know/
http://sweepingzen.com/only-dont-know/#commentsThu, 02 Jun 2011 02:13:23 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=31964In the midst of recent conflicts between people harboring starkly differing views on the conduct of the teacher-student relationship, my mind kept returning to the famous Zen aphorism and admonition, “Only don’t know.” I don’t recall the source of this teaching, but assume that many Zen masters have used it over time, stating it in ...

]]>In the midst of recent conflicts between people harboring starkly differing views on the conduct of the teacher-student relationship, my mind kept returning to the famous Zen aphorism and admonition, “Only don’t know.” I don’t recall the source of this teaching, but assume that many Zen masters have used it over time, stating it in different ways. You may have heard the expression, “The Don’t-Know Mind”; or my favorite: “Not knowing you know is best” – again, not attributed, thanks to my poor scholarship.

As an aside, my excuse for not attributing quotes is that great masters and writers of the past (e.g. Dogen Zenji) often freely quoted in order to make a point, though Master Dogen frequently mentions his sources in the text. With brush and rice-paper, mind you. I suppose that the extensive foot- and end-noting in vogue today is more or less a scholarly necessity, a requirement if one is to be taken seriously in the competitive arena of scholarship. But in an age when most readers can Google or otherwise look up virtually anything the writer can put on paper, all this footnoting seems a bit of an anachronism.

While this notion of not knowing is regarded as a high level of insight in Zen, accomplished only after exhausting the many customary ways of knowing – and thus a spiritual accomplishment – the idea may be usefully implemented on a less exalted level. In the daily interaction with fellow travelers at work, at home, or at the Zen center, we make a lot of unconscious assumptions about their behavior and underlying motives. Here is where granting the benefit of the doubt can become an actionable, and beneficial, form of only-not-knowing.

One of our senior Disciples in the Silent Thunder Order network of Sanghas developed a mantra for herself, in order to temper her admitted tendency to see others in an overly critical, even harsh, light. When she found herself doing so, she would sub-vocalize a chant: I could be wrong; I could be wrong; I could be wrong. I suggested to her, years later, that she adopt the corollary, I could be right; I could be right; I could be right.

Accepting that one could be wrong, and that one could also be right – simultaneously – would be the Zen way to go, I think. Master Dogen’s admonition in Fukanzazengi to “stop the functions of the mind” by setting aside all thoughts of good and evil, right or wrong, is of course intended to be followed while on the cushion, where it is actually doable. But it is difficult to apply when off the cushion, in the hurly-burly of everyday life. It becomes nearly impossible during times of interpersonal conflict.

As I have mentioned before, we can discuss the behavior of others without considering it as their fault, but it is an extremely slippery slope.

I think what I have learned is that I generally have no certain idea what motivates people to do and say the things they do and say. Including myself, sometimes. But I do have faith that over time it will become clear, if only we keep returning to the cushion. We can chant I could be wrong – and probably am and I could be right – but probably am not all day long and until doomsday. But we may never know for sure, when it comes to what is in the minds and hearts of others. We can only know our own hearts, and even that is another slippery slope. Zen, I think, teaches skepticism of one’s own self-image, mainly

But let’s set aside the social dimension for the nonce, and examine more personal aspects of the don’t-know-mind while on the cushion.

What is it that we think we know for sure, when we enter into Zen meditation? Even to say that one enters into Zen meditation contains a lot of unspoken assumptions. It asserts the familiar and classical fallacy that there is a person who is doing the zazen. It suggests that the time, causes and conditions before we sit in zazen are separate and apart from those when we are sitting. It assumes that there is something called Zen meditation that we can indeed enter into. It establishes that our meditation is not just meditation, but Zen meditation. It follows that there is something called Zen meditation that is not the same as other meditations. It also implies that, Zen or not, there is actually something called meditation. All of these, while bearing a degree of conventional truth, are fallacies.

It can also be argued that the notions that there is not something called Zen meditation to enter into, or that it is the same as all other meditations, are also fallacies. It is easier for us to fall for some fallacies than for others. It is easy to believe (in the non-religious sense, or philosophically) that Zen meditation is different from other meditations, indeed superior. Why? Because it is the meditation milieu of OUR choice. It must be superior, if we devote our precious time and effort to it – rather than to Transcendental Meditation, for example. TM is so yesterday, so demeaned by its former celebrity and ubiquity.

So, yes, we can only-don’t-know ourselves into complacency and a self-aggrandizing view, even of our own zazen. However, if we stick with zazen, this view will not last. Nothing survives zazen, nothing that we bring along, going in. Eventually, zazen will disabuse us of even the most obsessive and cloying of self-regarding assumptions.

According to Master Dogen, in real zazen we “forsake all delusive relationships, setting everything aside.” And, “thus stopping the functions of your mind, give up even the idea of becoming a buddha.” If we can do so, when we sit on the cushion, for example, there are no more troubling teacher-student relations. Stopping the functions of our mind, however, is not something we can do so easily. Or do, at all. Beyond thinking it is non-thinking; beyond knowing, and beyond doing, it must become non-doing.

One of the more subtle – one might say insidious – issues that comes up in formal training, with its implicit goal of dharma transmission, is what we might call the robe syndrome. The wagesa, rakusu, and okesa, as vestments, imply advancement through discrete stages of training on what psychology would refer to as a developmental model, the linear idea that we start at “A,” proceed to “B,” and eventually end up at “Z.”

There is nothing intrinsically incorrect or harmful about such a model, until it begins to infect the don’t-know mind, and we begin to think, on a subliminal level, that we do actually know. We may think, for example, or think we know, that the folks in the wagesas are not as advanced as those in the rakusus, let alone those in the okesas. And there is simply no touching the muckety-mucks in the brown or saffron robes.

In this instance of form over substance, the only-don’t-know mind would suggest that we withhold any judgment. It may be that vestments actually do mean something; it may be that they don’t. Certainly, they do not likely mean what we take them to mean.

Speaking of costume – and our cultural attachments to it – in business, there is an old saying from the boardroom, something like, “I would really like to hear what you have to say, but your outfit is speaking too loudly.” This points to clothing as messaging system, the appropriateness of which signals our degree of seriousness, down to the type of necktie, whether or not we are clean-shaven, wear too much makeup, et cetera. When we go out looking for a job, we get “suited up and tied down.” Of course, you can’t tell a book by its cover, but the cover (or dust jacket) may be what gets you to open the book.

Those in the know understand that vestments, such as robes, are nothing but fingers pointing. They are pointing to the actual spiritual raiment, known as the essence body, the Dharmakaya. As symbol, the robe is the object of a great degree of respect. The actual essential body is born with us as our birthday suit, but transcends the physical body.

For most of us, fingers pointing at our naked body would definitely be doing so in some degree of derision, rather than respect. Certainly not in awe, or holy agape. But the okesa and its abbreviated versions call upon us to regard with some reverence that which the Chinese masters call “this stinking skin sack,” perhaps only in order to mitigate against our proclivity for self-adoration.

The Original Body is not the body we work out, tone, train, tan, and otherwise worship. This object of our affection is called the Nirmanakaya, the transformation body, perhaps because it is in continual transformation, defying our utmost efforts to keep it young.

The Mahayana doctrine of the Trikaya says that each Buddha has three bodies. These are called the dharmakaya, sambogakaya and nirmanakaya. Very simply, dharmakaya is the body of absolute truth, sambogakaya is the body that experiences the bliss of enlightenment, and nirmanakaya is the body that manifests in the world.

Another way to understand the Trikaya is to think of the dharmakaya as the absolute nature of all beings, sambogakaya as the blissful experience of enlightenment, and nirmanakaya as the embodiment of dharmakaya in human form.

Set in the context of rationality enshrined by The Enlightenment (yes, that other one), this notion of the Trikaya, or three bodies, stands as a real litmus test for the only-don’t-mind of the practicing Westerner. We can wrap our minds around the Nirmanakaya; the Dharmakaya – okay, we get it as an aspiration going beyond the stinking skin sack; but the Sambohakaya? Bliss body? Aside from the fact that Zen is definitely not about finding one’s bliss, it is an affront to the rational mind, to contemplate that Buddhism propagates a notion so eerily similar to the Trinity of Christianity. But there it is.

Here, of course, the buddha in question is you, so you have to take it personally. Perhaps the fitting application of the don’t-know mind in confronting this tripartite mystery is of the variety of throwing the hands up. Or maybe we can attempt to construct more reasonable models that allow some self-respecting acceptance of such a mystical notion, in spite of our built-in, no-nonsense resistance.

For example, if we can embrace the Nirmanakaya as the one – ever-changing but familiar physical body (form); the Dharmakaya or essence body as the sub rosa jellyfish of the many – totally connected with the universal matrix, the inner and outer ocean of cellular interactions that actually constitute the (apparently) single body (emptiness); then we might see Sambhogakaya as the unifying consciousness principle – that very awareness of two fundamental polarities that are not fundamentally separate. Aghast in its joyful recognition of the ungraspable nature of the concrete reality of the first two bodies as inseparable and complementary (even though clearly and merely conceptual); then we may feel the enjoyment body as the non-rational, what-else-is-a-person-to-do, all-encompassing embrace of the “exploding plastic inevitable” (Robert Rauschenberg, Happenings), that is the unknowable, yet intimately known, reality.

How else is a buddha to live in the material world? Only by don’t-knowing.

Frankly, we don’t even know how big we are. Or how small. Some of us may get too big for our britches, but it is humbling to recognize that we don’t really know the distance from the tip of our nose to the floor, sitting in zazen. “Three feet”? What, exactly, is that? Our familiar measurements are fallacies – cartoons, caricatures, and jokes – of human agreement. Bite this cookie, get big; bite another one, get small (thank you Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). The universe is quietly laughing at us behind our backs. Do you hear it?

For your further consideration: we also do not know how far it is from our eyes to the “point” upon which our gaze is fixed, while sitting in zazen. We say, “three to nine feet in front of where you are sitting,” which simply points out the absurdity of it. The point upon which our gaze is fixed may as well be on the other side of the universe. Limited only by as far as the “eye of practice” can reach (thank you, Dogen).

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/only-dont-know/feed/0Memorial Dayhttp://sweepingzen.com/memorial-day-2/
http://sweepingzen.com/memorial-day-2/#commentsTue, 31 May 2011 02:50:24 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/2011/05/31/we-are-all-addicted-2/I was born in March of 1941, and over the next half a decade, as only a young child can, became vaguely familiar with the fact that there was a war going on. I still remember seeing the seemingly endless military transports, men and weapons in camo, parading through the small and relatively insignificant town ...

I was born in March of 1941, and over the next half a decade, as only a young child can, became vaguely familiar with the fact that there was a war going on.

I still remember seeing the seemingly endless military transports, men and weapons in camo, parading through the small and relatively insignificant town of Centralia, Illinois, centered in the corn and soy bean fields in the southern half of the state, about an hour due east of St. Louis, Missouri, the East-West axis metropolis; and complemented by Chicago on the North-South axis, where I would later pursue higher education and find the love of my life.

One of the clues was the boxes of things stored in our attic, which my bedroom abutted, on the second floor of the house my parents rented on a 20-acre farm in southern Illinois. Amongst those curios were cartons of exotic art supplies, such as fine drawing pencils and erasers, the smell of which I can remember to this day. Nothing like this had ever been seen in the small town we lived in, and cannot even be found there today. This was big-city, heady stuff.

It may be that that early exposure to what, in my world, were rare, mysterious items, later led to my interest in art; and fostered my higher education and professional career in art and design. I was, of course, aware of the ubiquitous #2 pencil we used in school, but 2B, H, 4H, and other, dark green, fine pencils, were out of another world. The husband of my mother’s youngest sister, aunt Jeannie, was a commercial artist, uncle Dick. But now, he was in the United States Navy. And his professional equipment was in our attic.

In my upstairs room, at the back of the house, where no one else stayed (the other bedrooms for my two sisters, older brother, and parents, were on the first floor, toward the front of the house, off the living room separated by pocket doors), hung on the walls was a collection of Native American (we called them Indian in those days) arrowheads and a couple of tomahawk stones, mounted on warm wooden, framed plaques in almost religiously symmetrical arrays. I think these belonged to my Uncle Ira, who was now in the United States Army. After it was over, they went away, along with uncle Dick’s art supplies. Both constituted my first lesson in covetousness denied.

Uncle Carl (Junior) was in the Navy as well, and Uncle Bud was, I think, in the Marines. Oldest sister Aunt Marie, and my mother, Lucille, second oldest, rounded out the seven siblings of the Fox family, on my mother’s side, honored members of “the greatest generation.” Their parents, grandpa Jim, and grandma Nelly Fox, were my first models of self-sufficient, self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth Americans, with whom I later was privileged to spend my summers in the depths of the Missouri Ozarks.

My dad, Armon (“Kinky” or “Curly,” after his beautiful hair) was grounded in America during the war, as part of the Signal Corps, for physical reasons I do not understand to this day. His only and older brother, Arnold, was in the Navy. Their mother, grandma Gerva, and her husband, grandpa George, provided the balance of the older generation to my upbringing. George Sanders, was dad’s stepfather; his biological father, grandpa Elliston, a conductor on the railroad, died long before I was born.

From these intimations of mortality from early childhood, I found my grounding in what would eventually become manifested as the highly pragmatic, yet highly devotional, aspect of Zen. Without knowing anything of the treasure of Zen, these folks were living examples of it in their greater, down-to-earth wisdom and compassion. In some ways.

Uncle Ira, for example (I inherited his American flag from his funeral), had fought in the Pacific Basin, and later Korea, purple heart and other awards for bravery, including making field lieutenant. But after all was said and done, he had no animosity toward the Japanese, nor the Koreans. He did advise me personally, when I asked him directly, to do whatever I had to do to stay out of it, as he thought it was simply madness.

Another warrior that I knew as a dear and sympatico client, working for Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Akron, Ohio, was completely and irredeemably opposed to anything Japanese, as a result of the atrocities he had witnessed during the war. The contrast between these two attitudes, two men of my parents’ generation that I admired so greatly, informed my understanding of suffering in the Buddhist sense, and of the difficult nature of Buddhist compassion.

Funny story about Uncle Dick, after the war, when he and Aunt Jeannie came to visit. They drove a Crosley, perhaps the first compact car in America, so compact it could drive down a sidewalk. Which, of course, uncle Dick did frequently, and with perverse pleasure. He and aunt Jeannie showed up at the farm to retrieve the art supplies, much to my preteen chagrin, sometime after 1945.

I witnessed, but did not remember, conversations that my dad later related with a measure of considerable angst (festered within a basic level of angst over the relative post-war heroic status of his in-laws, when he himself had not been directly engaged in overseas missions), concerning stories that uncle Dick would tell, apparently with great relish. My dad considered them egregious exaggerations, if not outright lies. One such narrative was that uncle Dick had become so familiar with his pre-war daily route to work (I think in Los Angeles), that when leaving home in the morning, accompanied by carpoolers, he would fall sound asleep at the wheel (presumably of the Crosley) and make his way to work without incident, stopping safely at all the stoplights, and finally arriving at the office, where he would regain full consciousness.

My dad regarded this with the same incredulousness that he held for the prospects of poor aunt Jeannie’s future with such a compulsive liar. It wasn’t long thereafter that they were divorced. But I always valued uncle Dick for introducing me to a certain event horizon of art, something larger out there, my much-anticipated world of art and design.

In recognition of my burgeoning interest in the visual arts, uncle Arnold would later present me with a birthday gift that expressed his understanding of my aspiration, in the form of a “paint-by-numbers” kit, including a canvas-wrapped board and prepared tubes of pre-mixed oil paints, the smell of which I also remember to this day. I completed the painting, a scene of boats at harbor, if memory serves. Even at that age, eight or nine years old, I recognized the misunderstanding of what art was all about, inherent in the paint-by-numbers fad, but did not hold it against my uncle.

So in memoriam, this Memorial Day weekend, I recall a rich and complex mix of memories and connections that are difficult if not impossible to sort out. They all add up to a sense of deep and profound gratitude to my forebears in the culture of my immediate family. But I also recall an overwhelming sense of humility toward my Zen master, Soyu Matsuoka-roshi, who came to America in 1939, endured internment in the camps during WWII, yet emerged as an international proponent of building bridges of peace between the USA and Japan.

Let us dedicate ourselves and our practice to the continuance of this great rapprochement between East and West, which of course, do not really exist, as such. This is one of the great answers to the eternal Zen question, “Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?”

Teachers at established Zen Centers and accredited institutions of higher learning are hereby permitted to distribute photocopied excerpts accompanied by this copyright to their students, for purposes of education only.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/memorial-day-2/feed/0Solar War (Earth Day 2011)http://sweepingzen.com/solar-war/
http://sweepingzen.com/solar-war/#commentsFri, 22 Apr 2011 22:33:57 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=28600Once upon a time there was a solar system with eight or nine planetoids, depending on who was counting. Most all of them had long been vastly modified, including some of their satellite moons, for inhabitation by the human species, which at that time came to about 40 billion beings all told, give or take ...

]]>Once upon a time there was a solar system with eight or nine planetoids, depending on who was counting. Most all of them had long been vastly modified, including some of their satellite moons, for inhabitation by the human species, which at that time came to about 40 billion beings all told, give or take a billion.

All of the governments of the solar planetary system had finally gotten together, and gotten together the wherewithal, to launch the first manned interstellar probe in history, to another solar system. One that had been found to be the most likely to harbor life, based on some signals that had been detected, which seemed to indicate potential intelligence; and an analysis of the conditions on one of the planets orbiting the other sun, which promised the capacity to sustain carbon-based life, as it was in the “Cinderella spot.”

The project had placed considerable strain upon the human and material resources of the combined nations of the united worlds, and there had been considerable strain on the comity of the various sponsoring governments as well, stemming from the political cooperation required to pull off such a monumental project. As with all great accomplishments of the race, naturally this project had its detractors. When the launch finally occurred, it left behind some disgruntled leaders who had either been outright opponents, or felt slighted in terms of getting credit for the effort. Publicity attendant upon a grand vision, and the near-hysterical level of rapture accompanying the launch, after nearly a century of anticipation, did not help.

The city-sized ship was armed to the teeth with the latest technology in weaponry, just in case it found that the new civilization was not friendly. The plan included building an outpost in the new solar system, as well as harvesting the energy needed for a return trip if necessary. The long-term plan was to provide the means for others to leave this system in anticipation of its sun dying, which had finally been calculated as a date certain, though far in the future. The idea, while desperate, if successful would set the stage for other escape voyages, or several, in the next centuries. There were tearful, final departures of thousands of families.

However, as soon as the monstrous vessel was safely out of range, that is, had reached the point of no return, one of the planet governance systems launched a full-out attack on another, the one which had most grievously insulted and demeaned their leadership in the final stages of the project. Perhaps unintentionally, perhaps intentionally. No one would ever know for sure.

With the solarwide communications systems available at that time, all governments were instantly aware of the attack, and began taking defensive measures, launching civilization-destroying attacks on the aggressor planet, as well as others suspected of plotting to do the same to them.

This resulted in the total destruction of the various planets’ life-supporting capacity, all except for one. This planet had been the “zoo” of the system for as long as history had been kept. The beings inhabiting it had gone through many natural disasters, die-offs and evolutions, but the overseer population did not interfere. It was a favorite vacation spot, but ships were not allowed to land, only to observe from safe orbits that would not contaminate the natural ecosystems. It was considered the spiritual life of the species, and represented the one sacrosanct value held highest by all populations and their governments.

When the trigger was pulled that began the solar war, those in the know, and who had the means, the elites and wealthiest of the citizens, were prepared, They bailed out of their doomed planets with their own private ships. They escaped to the planet preserve, which was the only inhabitable place not likely be attacked by any other planet. As it happened, several small ships, at least one from each planet, survived the crossfire and managed to safely land on the sacred planet.

Personal ships, for security reasons, were strictly regulated in capacity to store only enough fuel to make the trip one-way. Which meant they would be stranded, and would have to survive by living off the land in very primitive conditions.

They took precautions not to land near each other, as all were carrying only minor personal weapons as dictated by law, and did not want to engage each other in combat. They chose their landing places carefully, to ensure survival as much as possible, near potable water and sources of food.

Untold eons later, they had become wildly successful in surviving on the rich and fertile planet, which, owing to its particular location in the system, caused some anomalies in their evolution in that relatively short span of time. Traits originally associated with their differing home planets changed, other vestiges remained. The survivors spread out from their points of landing, eventually to explore and settle in all the corners of the land and seas, developing new technologies that allowed them to survive in the most inhospitable of environs. They had long since lost all racial memory of their origins, and all evidence of their primordial technology had decayed out of existence. But there existed a kind of subliminal yearning in their genes, a distant memory of even more distant worlds. To explore space. Thus, they once again developed the capability of space travel, landing on the planet’s single moon, and planning to visit one of the nearer planets that their ancestors had destroyed.

Unfortunately, their survival success led to such dominance of the sanctuary planet that the species began to act like a cancer, contaminating the atmosphere, the water sources, and killing off most of the native animal and plant species. The possibility of being able to terraform other solar bodies, so as to provide an escape hatch from the poisoned planet, grew more and more remote, as governments of nations became more and more corrupt, and allowed the deterioration to continue largely unchecked. Until finally, a point of no return was reached. The doomed planet, once a veritable garden of eden, had, long ago, come to be called Earth.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/solar-war/feed/0Criticismhttp://sweepingzen.com/criticism/
http://sweepingzen.com/criticism/#commentsFri, 15 Apr 2011 14:29:28 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=26778It is more than a little odd to quote one’s own comments, but please allow me to lead in with last month’s closing paragraph: One of the many downsides of growing older is that you step on toes more. One of the few upsides is that it doesn’t matter as much. They are not going ...

]]>It is more than a little odd to quote one’s own comments, but please allow me to lead in with last month’s closing paragraph:

One of the many downsides of growing older is that you step on toes more. One of the few upsides is that it doesn’t matter as much. They are not going to be mad at you for very long. This I learned from my mom. Walking on eggs takes too much increasingly precious time. Please forgive me for my bluntness. Next time we will take up the matter of criticism in more depth.

It is sometimes necessary to criticize, so we often end up stepping on toes unintentionally, especially in a large community. As a person who finds himself in the position of leading a Zen sangha, I am often called upon to respond to peoples’ criticism of others. In doing so, I cannot help but criticize the person for criticizing others, by implication, if not directly.

In Zen, we are like a large extended family, and my formal students take on qualities in my eyes much like my own children, even grandchildren, with attendant affection. This is often an age-appropriate way of looking at the relationship, at my biological age, but applies even to those equal or senior to myself. Buddha was said to have come to see all of his community as his children, and not in a condescending way.

Zen practice has allowed me to see clearly my own mistakes, and to turn self-criticism into a positive force for change. I have seen with startling clarity, in retrospect, the mistakes I made, with all the best intentions, with my own children, as an immature biological father and husband. I have been able to redeem those relationships to a degree, and hope to continue learning from my own mistakes within my dharma family as well. As a dharma father, I hope to do a better job of my sangha relationships than I did as a biological father. And I hope you come to see sangha as your true family.

But the practice of Zen Buddhist compassion is an outgrowth of insight gained alone, primarily on the cushion. The practice of zazen begins with, and to some degree remains, critical self-examination. From time on the cushion arises the “mirror of Zen,” in which we can see ourselves and others with unbiased clarity. We see that we have the same, or even more egregious, failings that we might see in others. This is what the Precepts and Perfections remind us to do: criticize the self. Zen is not about developing and nurturing self-esteem, but rather self-control, in a sense. There can be no stronger criticism of the self than to challenge its fundamental reality.

This is why personal practice comes before communal practice in Zen. I ask for forgiveness for my congenital bluntness in the social context, as I often fail to practice the best skillful means, or tact, in dealing with immediate issues of personality conflicts. I am apparently not alone in this; I have heard that Katagiri Roshi once told his students, clearly in some frustration, to “Just shut up and do it.” What it is, is a variable, I think.

As we get older, we naturally lose patience with the social preference for avoiding conflict and confrontation. In facing the inevitability of sickness, aging and death, which we so assiduously avoid on the societal level, there really is no time to waste. This comes into sharp relief with age.

Merely titling this month’s commentary Criticism is likely to trigger a visceral reaction, dreading yet another polemic. With such emotion-laden terms, it is always a relief to scan a dictionary for a dispassionate perspective on their technical meaning. From the New Oxford American Dictionary conveniently bundled with my computer, we find:

criticism

noun

1 the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes

2 the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work

Criticism, a critical attitude toward others (#1), has unfortunately become endemic, a hallmark of our culture, and trending toward the global. Public media, covering mostly celebrity, politics and crime (the highly filtered dimensions of humanity that their owners tout as newsworthy) are filled with constant harangue, finding fault with others and praising oneself at the expense of others. Some professional critics even make a good living specializing in criticizing other critics, like vipers in a pit turning on each other. American society thus has a long way to go to accede to the wisdom of Buddhism’s Precepts, or even to engage a public discourse genuinely intended for the good of all. We are, then, culturally conditioned to be other-critical, critical of others, usually as the first line of defense of ourselves.

Criticism as positive process (#2 above), also called critique, is more in line with the Zen way, and can be seen as a skillful or expedient means:

critique

noun

a detailed analysis and assessment of something, esp. a literary, philosophical, or political theory.

verb

evaluate (a theory or practice) in a detailed and analytical way

Again, from April’s comment on Community Culture, in professional arts and design circles, key to the method is critique. It stops short of criticizing persons, instead focusing on the process, or the product, under development. The outcome effect upon the audience—in the form of words, images, objects or events—is its sole purpose. It can be improved by skillful critique.

Those unfortunates who find themselves in the role of “teacher,” whether it be in the context of Zen Buddhism or the arts and sciences, have an unavoidable, built-in responsibility to critique those who ask to be their students. It goes with the territory, but of course there are few good maps.

Early in my professional career, I taught graphic and industrial design, art, media studies, and general creativity on the university level. I have since learned more about the dilemmas of teaching from many of my Zen students who are engaged in the teaching profession, in different disciplines. One of the most difficult dimensions of their job, in relation to their students, is grading students on their performance. It is not only an onerous task requiring a great deal of time, but it also results in grave consequences to the future career of the student. Whether or not a given individual should be given a certain grade in a given course of study is not a simple issue. There are many gray areas (including hair) for the teacher, who has to find a balance between the measurable and immeasurable, quantities and qualities, of the person, the subject, and the degree of its mastery.

Students these days, at least at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, are even asked to evaluate—criticize—their teachers. Their comments can have a determining effect upon the teacher’s career. It wasn’t this way when I was teaching, thank goodness, or I may not have survived for very long.

In the case of Zen, the long- and short-term consequences can be as important to the wellbeing of the student as getting a grade in college. Self-image, perceived position in the community, et cetera, can be positively or negatively affected by the teacher’s recognition of accomplishments in stages of Zen training, or by the withholding of such recognition. Envy towards, and resentment of, one’s teacher or dharma bothers and sisters can arise, yes, even in the harmonious sangha. Sibling and filial rivalry.

As with a teacher/student evaluation of a critical course performance toward an advanced degree in higher learning, in Zen we can find ourselves caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it is not a good idea to ignore deficiencies in training, and hope for the best as students mature, passing them to the next level for social reasons. On the other, it can be counterproductive to be too strict in demanding adherence to standards that are ultimately not critical to practice.

Seniority counts, but it is not a simple seniority based on time. It is instead a kind of spiritual maturity, which is very difficult to judge. Over time, it can become clear that an individual is prepared to carry on Zen practice in their daily life, regardless of circumstance. It is more complicated to determine whether they have the disposition to lead the sangha. We have seen many violations in this regard, as recent and historical sangha scandals attest.

As mentioned in last month’s comment, in Zen, the Precepts are our guide. In the use of criticism as a skillful means, the balance that must be struck is articulated most clearly by those that caution us against discussing the faults of others, and praising ourselves at the expense of others. Especially in refining a learning process, we must be able to discuss the behavior of others, but must do so without finding fault. Even more so with ourselves.

At this refined level of discrimination, only the person knows for sure. It is difficult to impossible to judge the Zen book by its cover. This is part and parcel of the self-examination of Zen practice. Inside monk/outside monk, as one visiting teacher put it. It is far easier to judge our own intent and practice than it is to judge that of others. We can be honest with ourselves, but must be careful not to use “just being honest” as an excuse for criticizing others.

In Realizing Genjokoan, his recent publication of an excellent and extensive commentary on Master Dogen’s essay, Okumura Roshi reveals another facet of focusing on internal, as opposed to external, practice:

In any case, Buddha nature was originally defined as the hidden, dominant potential to become a tathagata; it is inherent in all living beings. A famous analogy uses the image of a diamond covered with rock and dirt. The diamond represents the Buddha nature that exists in all of us; it is always with us but is hidden beneath the rock and dirt of delusion. One must therefore first discover the diamond and then remove the dirt and rock and polish the diamond with Buddhist practice. Only when a person becomes an enlightened Buddha is the true beauty of the diamond revealed.

Okumura Roshi does not say explicitly that this process of discovering the diamond; removing the rock and dirt; and the final revelation of the beauty of the diamond are all first-person experience. It is implied that when the true beauty of the diamond is revealed, it is not revealed to others, but to oneself. In fact, no one else can know for sure whether or not this person has found and uncovered the gem within. Therefore we should hesitate to judge others in this regard.

When we see faults in others, we are only seeing the “rock and dirt” that conceal theirs, as well as our own, Buddha nature. As long as we focus on the “outside monk” nature of others, we will never see through our own. As mentioned before, when we try to hold up the teachings of Buddhism as a mirror to criticize others, what shows up instead is our own reflection. It indiscriminately reveals our every defect.

Most criticism is directed to obvious elements that one can point to. We cannot criticize another’s wisdom or compassion directly, as we inevitably can only see the outer form, not the inner intent, let alone insight.

Again, a precaution against criticizing each other publicly—for insignificant details such as how one executes the protocols of service, one’s understanding (or lack thereof) of the buddhadharma, or generally boorish behavior—creating a danger of simultaneously violating the two Precepts aforementioned, plus a good dose of the other eight, by implication.

Master Dogen did not hesitate to criticize others, as is noted in the appendix on his life in Realizing Genjokoan:

Lately, a number of the shallow-minded in the country of Sung do not understand the purport and substance [of the doctine of “All things themselves are ultimate reality” (shoho-jisso)] and regard the statements of ultimate reality (jisso) as false. Furthermore, they study the doctrines of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, maintaining that they are the same as the Way of the Buddhas and ancestors. Also, there is a view of the unity of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Some say that the three are just like the three legs of a tripod kettle which cannot stand upright if it lacks even one leg There is nothing comparable to the foolishness of such a view.

Obviously, Dogen did not feel he needed to sugar-coat his comments when it came to defending buddhadharma. This scathing indictment of Sung China, along with his others on 13th Century Zen in Japan, find clear parallels today. Amongst these are the “new-aging” of Zen; the syncretistic tendencies of religionists who would like to ensconce all world religions safely in one neat container; and the promoters of “psychological Zen” who would marginalize Zen as just another arrow in their quiver of methods. A more subtle, but equally insidious, distortion of Zen, is the attempt to make it a vehicle for social engineering, or political correctness.

Historically, Zen Buddhism never seems to completely turn its back on society, despite its reputed predilection for mountain living. But it certainly casts a jaundiced eye in the direction of what passes for society. Matsuoka Roshi said, “Civilization conquers us.” If the main point of Zen is to help us all get along together, it is reduced to a kind of Confucianism, or some other “ism” du jour. The point of people getting together in Zen communities is not the reformation of society (though that may be a possible side-effect), but to provide an environment conducive to the reformation of the individual. This is one form of the perfection of dana, or generosity.

Most of these distortions amount to ill-founded if well-intentioned attempts to mount a critique of Zen, because accepting it on its own premises is very challenging. Zen is the “comfortable way” when it comes to its meditation. But its implications can, and should, make its practitioners uncomfortable. Zen cannot be put in a box. Attempts to do so, however well-intended and intellectually defended, amount to not much more than an evasion of its single-pointed truth that “ultimate reality” can be directly apprehended. This central message of Zen can be lost in mixing it up with other ideas.

In Zen teacher/student and student/student relationships, we are mutually engaged in a mission. Matsuoka Roshi remarked, “We teach each other Buddhism.” But he did not mean that all opinions are equal in Zen. It is an asymmetrical relationship, and Zen is not a democracy. Teachers may perforce criticize students, but students who criticize their teachers may as well find another teacher.

This may be unfortunate, but it is true, nonetheless. In discussion with my contemporaries, I have seen that they all take this position. We cannot be 100% responsible for making Zen clear, let alone palatable, to our students. Maybe 50%, but that is assuming a lot. The Zen student is at least 50% responsible for her/his own training, and cannot hold the teacher accountable for a lack of understanding. An old saying holds that if you equal your teacher’s understanding, you have only half their power. In order to equal the power of your teacher, you have to exceed their understanding. Obviously the teacher cannot be responsible for whether or not you succeed.

An even older teaching is attributed to Shakyamuni Buddha. He was confronted, the story goes, by a young student who insisted that he, Buddha, answer the “ten cosmic questions,” such as how the universe began, how it will end, et cetera (Buddha was known for dismissing these philosophical conundrums as irrelevant). The young man delivered what he thought to be an ultimatum, that if Buddha refused to answer, he (the young man) could not accept him as his teacher. Buddha replied “You are under no obligation to be my student; and I am under no obligation to be your teacher.”

If and when we find ourselves mired in criticism of others, especially of the local teachers and senior students, it may be time, and best, to move on. It is ill-advised to attempt to shape a sangha to our personal benefit, to imagine that it would be better if the community were organized along different lines than what we find. We must all attempt to leave criticism at the door of the zendo, along with the rest of our baggage, and take up the way of critique, most especially applied to ourselves. Or we better really know whereof we speak. It has been the hallmark of Zen succession that the students stand on the shoulders of the teachers.

Next month will mark a departure from this line of criticism: Don’t know.